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>It would be better to have a functioning micro-payments system. There's some things that seem inevitable to me. True flat-rate music streaming services was on

by nothis 11y ago

>It would be better to have a functioning micro-payments system. There's some things that seem inevitable to me. True flat-rate music streaming services was one of those things and we're pretty much there. Moving away from ad-supported websites to a convenient subscription model is the other. I don't think the war against AdBlock can be won. How do you disable a software that simply hides content? Force users to click the ads? Put them into more and more annoying places? We already know the endgame of that and it's shady pop-up orgies. I doubt the New York Times wants to be associated with that. But I also won't pay $10 for every single website I might visit a month (some, maybe, for only an article or two in a link). What we need is a common subscription flat-rate that fairly splits revenue between websites you actually visit. Not sure about the privacy concerns but at least here, the user data wouldn't have to be used for advertising.

DanielBMarkham 11y ago
Agreed. More to the point, it can be argued that if I do not want to consume ads, my browser displaying them means my browser is broken. This entire thing where your attention is hijacked because you have a passing interest in subject X is out of date. Yes, we've had passive ad sponsorship of all kinds of events in times past, but it wasn't a situation where the advertisers monitored your every move and were aggressively interfering with your content consumption. It was a situation where they wanted to be recognized for supporting the content you were consuming. Ads have gone from being passive, supportive, widespread constructs to being aggressive, directive, in-your-business constructs. Not good.
- dhimes 11y ago
  Also agree. It's especially broken on mobile, which seems to be the Wild West of grabbing accidental clicks and seedy tracking. I don't mind ads. Trackers need to be outlawed. I'll tell an ad service what kinds of ads I'd like to see if they'd like. I don't want to be tracked though.
smoe 11y ago
I would love to have an option between flat rate and non-expiring prepaid. Let me pay e.g 100$ into an account and subtract some cents for every article I read. Or maybe I'm just weird with my dislike of subscriptions in general:) I'd be happily spending the equivalent of a annual nyt subscription per year but I'm not willing to pay that amount to a sole news site. As it is, everybody tries to do a vendor lock-in while whining that people are not walking into or get out of that trap.
- DanielBMarkham 11y ago
  Interesting concept: a centralized content micropayment service. You pay in ten bucks a month, a little gets taken out every time you visit various sites. I like it. Not sure how to get enough vendor participation, though. I imagine the way to go would be to pair up with one of the large ad networks -- you could even work it where if you pay, the ads don't come. If you're not in the system, you get ad-ed like everybody else.
  - mdpopescu 11y ago
    This is what flattr.com does - my understanding is that it's far from having success.
  - smoe 11y ago
    About two year ago, I read a blog post by someone who tried to work on a centralized payment service with german/swiss/austrian publishers. Unfortunately I can't find the link at the moment, but as I remember his conclusion was, that they were not willing to try something like this at all. Everyone wanted to have the precious user data for themselves alone. Which correlates with the experience I had working for a big publisher: News papers aren't just competitors, they are antagonists. My prediction is, if centralized content micropayment service is ever going to happen, it won't come from the publishers, but a big player with enough leverage like Amazon, Google, Apple, etc. Then the publisher will write outrage articles about how unfair and anti press freedom the cut they get is. Until they adapt silently. Maybe I'm a bit pessimistic, but I doubt that the proud traditional companies have learnt much from what happened in the music industry. Which on the bright side might be good for new media startups and different approaches to journalism.

by nothis 11y ago

DanielBMarkham 11y ago

Agreed. More to the point, it can be argued that if I do not want to consume ads, my browser displaying them means my browser is broken. This entire thing where your attention is hijacked because you have a passing interest in subject X is out of date. Yes, we've had passive ad sponsorship of all kinds of events in times past, but it wasn't a situation where the advertisers monitored your every move and were aggressively interfering with your content consumption. It was a situation where they wanted to be recognized for supporting the content you were consuming. Ads have gone from being passive, supportive, widespread constructs to being aggressive, directive, in-your-business constructs. Not good.

dhimes 11y ago
Also agree. It's especially broken on mobile, which seems to be the Wild West of grabbing accidental clicks and seedy tracking. I don't mind ads. Trackers need to be outlawed. I'll tell an ad service what kinds of ads I'd like to see if they'd like. I don't want to be tracked though.

smoe 11y ago

I would love to have an option between flat rate and non-expiring prepaid. Let me pay e.g 100$ into an account and subtract some cents for every article I read. Or maybe I'm just weird with my dislike of subscriptions in general:) I'd be happily spending the equivalent of a annual nyt subscription per year but I'm not willing to pay that amount to a sole news site. As it is, everybody tries to do a vendor lock-in while whining that people are not walking into or get out of that trap.

DanielBMarkham 11y ago
Interesting concept: a centralized content micropayment service. You pay in ten bucks a month, a little gets taken out every time you visit various sites. I like it. Not sure how to get enough vendor participation, though. I imagine the way to go would be to pair up with one of the large ad networks -- you could even work it where if you pay, the ads don't come. If you're not in the system, you get ad-ed like everybody else.
- mdpopescu 11y ago
  This is what flattr.com does - my understanding is that it's far from having success.
- smoe 11y ago
  About two year ago, I read a blog post by someone who tried to work on a centralized payment service with german/swiss/austrian publishers. Unfortunately I can't find the link at the moment, but as I remember his conclusion was, that they were not willing to try something like this at all. Everyone wanted to have the precious user data for themselves alone. Which correlates with the experience I had working for a big publisher: News papers aren't just competitors, they are antagonists. My prediction is, if centralized content micropayment service is ever going to happen, it won't come from the publishers, but a big player with enough leverage like Amazon, Google, Apple, etc. Then the publisher will write outrage articles about how unfair and anti press freedom the cut they get is. Until they adapt silently. Maybe I'm a bit pessimistic, but I doubt that the proud traditional companies have learnt much from what happened in the music industry. Which on the bright side might be good for new media startups and different approaches to journalism.