If I watched more ads, does SLOWLY benefit ?

It started with a simple question

A question in a very short topic in our subReddit, asking about the minimum time interval between watching video ads :

Don't you guys think 15 minutes should be reduced a bit. Like 10 minutes for 1 coin for an advertisement?

This started a discussion that went a lot deeper. And I thought it deserves to appear in a full Blog post, so here it is.

For newer users who might not be familiar with how 'free coins' work, see the “Guide to Getting Free Slowly Coins“ blog post for details and how to get started. 😉👍

My first response :

Hello, you could write to the Team and offer the suggestion — their email is support at getslowly dot com

There might be restrictions from the ad service providers, mainly Google AdSense, their norms might dictate the maximum frequency of ads per user, for example.

A way to get more coins is to use two devices – an older phone could run a second instalation of Slowly, using a secondary account for example.

And then you could double the ads and coins per hour, maximum to near 8 per hour, from 4 for a single account.

Why a second account in 2nd device?

To simplify things.

How does that help? easy, secondary account can gift stamps to main one. 🤨Or to any friend for example.

Any old discarded Android phone or tablet, or even an older iPad can be used for this, if you wanted to keep costs low.

Older iPads might need an older version of Slowly as the more recent versions require iOS 11 or higher. But they also can run SLOWLY in Tablet mode, which is a good work environment for real letter writing (better than any Mobile phone, as it has larger screen).

And this brought some questions

From our Reddit user DioRemTW, a well written comment which got me inspired.

Isn't using an alt account to share coins against the TOS? Like, that's cheating with the currency of the app that costs irl money, and it's limited to 15 minutes so people don't abuse the system and get more money than the devs intend, otherwise purchasing coins wouldn't really make sense.

I'm genuinely curious, but even if it's not against the TOS it's not something that should be allowed in my humble opinion.

A detailed reply followed

If you read the SLOWLY Terms of Service, it is a very harsh and one sided document, indeed.

They reserve the right to terminate any user's account, with or without reason – this is literally included on it. The document was created by some lawyer's office and is completely on the side of the company – and we are left hoping they do not push thru with it, or that one could have recourse in case there's a dispute.

See this section – ToS, section 9, Availability of Service, partial quote :

We may without prior warning or subsequent notice terminate your account and access to SLOWLY for any or no reason. We may decide to terminate your account for a number of different reasons. ... We will make all termination decisions in our sole discretion and we will not be liable to you or any third party for any termination of your account or access to your Content or SLOWLY.

Unlikely we could get redress via legal manouvering, as this would be an international dispute. So, it's best not to abuse the Terms, and to not irk them if possible.

Location, Location, Location

A very common example is people using mock location methods, which many do, but as I have said publicly here numerous times, it's not something we defend or explain in public — as it can be construed as abusing the Terms of Service if the person doing it is simply jumping from country to country to collect the Location stamps for each.

This does affect the company – as each foreign stamp could have been sold for 25 coins with the World Explorer, in my local market 25 coins are half a Dollar, 50 CAD cents.

A country might have multiple Location stamps, for example India, US and Portugal – very different in most aspects, but each sporting 5 location stamps. Net loss to Slowly for a mock visitor? $ 2.50 CAD for each of those countries our intrepid navigator visits.

I wrote a detailed Blog post, here, explaining all of these factors, and it's recommended reading for anyone using any mock location methods.

In a nutshell, don't talk about it in public places. 😉

And considering secondary accounts

The Alt account, on the other hand, is not causing Slowly ANY losses. The funds for each coin issued are paid by the advertiser whose video is shown.

As I have explained in my “Guide to Getting Free Slowly Coins” blog post, for Slowly Communications, each video watched is a gain. They receive a few cents in real currency, and in turn give us a mock and restricted use 'coin' worth 2 cents CAD (the local cost per coin, if I bought 500 coins pack as I previously described).

Slowly Coins are not real currency

...and cannot be used in anything but paying for virtual items in the company's own internal market. They cannot also be redeemed, gifted or transferred to any other user.

The Terms of Service has an interesting section specifically on this – Section 6, Virtual Currency, states:

When you purchase virtual currency (Coins), you do not own them. Instead, you receive a limited right to use them for eligible services and products on SLOWLY such as Stamps, Avatars, Postcards, and the purchase of virtual Gifts for other users.

Purchases of Coins are non-refundable and non-transferable, even if they expire or are revoked or discontinued. We may change the purchase price for Coins at any time, as well as the ways you can use Coins. We reserve the right to revoke or stop issuing Coins at any time without notice, refund, or compensation, and to set expiration dates for Coins. Coins may not be redeemed for any sum of money or monetary value. If you delete your account or your account is terminated for any reason, you will lose all accumulated Coins without refund or other compensation. You agree that we will have no liability to you based on our exercise of our rights with respect to Coins.

Coins purchased by any user do not constitute property and are not transferable.

And as I write this comment it is clearly a Blog page material in scope, so I plan to copy and work with this text in a Blog page tomorrow. Thank you for asking, DioRemTW !

Clarifying once more :

- Video ads have no cost to Slowly Communications, but instead represent a revenue source for the company. The more we watch, the better they do.

- Ads are funded by the advertiser showing their video, and the cost is low per impression; we get 2 cents worth (in a virtual, locked in fake currency). I would guess Slowly Communications gets 3 cents in real money, per ad impression, maybe? (they do not disclose ANY financials, unfortunately).

** Ad Revenues Update :

I received some messages and more research got some real data on the average Ad revenue rate. Which varies substantially, depending on the Country the ad is showed on, and also on the mobile device platform. For iOS Rewarded Video and different countries :

And for Android Rewarded Video :

Generally speaking, the Android eCPM rates are in the same ball park as its iOS counterpart. Android in-app advertisers should expect paying around $11.50 per 1,000 views in the United States, $10.50 on the Japanese market, about $7.00 in the United Kingdom and only $1.80 on the Spanish app market.

The real revenue is half of my earlier estimate above. At best, in the US market :

Location spoofing and repercussions – has it happened ?

Not that I know of, but I received a personal letter from a high company official, which asked me not to write a project I had in mind and described to them – and the reason was they felt it could lead to people discovering easy methods for mock location (which was NOT the intention of that post at all, I must say).

This letter stated in no uncertain terms that they viewed abuse of location services as FRAUD, and that in this case it was grounds for account termination, as per Terms of Service.

I did not publish the intended project – as per their request. They suggested I could instead write and explain about the damage being done to many Game Developers, for example Pokemón Go, by people using mock locations, and scooping out items without leaving their home sofa or bed.

I understood and complied.

Could they know or prove someone did it ?

OMG, yes, there's no hiding it. Every time someone 'jumps' into another location, any letters sent thru there have that foreign country's two letter Postmark. No denying it, and they can pull your file and scroll thru ALL your letters if they want or need, to prove abuse, etc.

VPNs are so common nowadays that average Joe user might already be using one, to watch videos in foreign location, for example. And we have mentions of that when people ask someone who posted a Foreign location stamp 'How did they get that?'

I have responded anytime this happens and suggested this should NOT be posted in ANY public forum – not on Reddit, not on Twitter, etc.

'The first rule of Fight Club is, you don't talk about Fight Club.'

Hope this answers the questions, please feel free to comment and ask if I missed some aspect you are interested in.

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