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The value for the user isn't there. Netflix: $8 = no ads Google Contributor: $10 = half as many ads on a few websites. uBlock is free for no ads. You have to

The value for the user isn't there. Netflix: $8 = no ads Google Contributor: $10 = half as many ads on a few websites. uBlock is free for no ads. You have to be better than that. The web is a weird place. I think people, abstractly, might be fine paying for good content. Part of the problem is that the internet is brimming with garbage, and no one wants to pay for garbage. If a user incidentally visits a site and it isn't what they were looking for, they don't want part of their monthly ad-bidding funds to go to that site. I fear that since things have been free for 20+ years, people aren't going to ever pay for written content. Maybe if we are forced to pay for every view, we'll think twice about where it comes from and not waste money on clickbait. Probably not.

jchewitt 11y ago
The web is full of misleading garbage, but you can get every book ever written inexpensively or free from some combination of Archive.org and Amazon. Many books are trash, but at least we have some means of sorting them. The web is a big popularity contest, with Google search / Facebook rank being a modified popularity contest. What's popular and entertaining is unlikely to be what's true or useful. People are very willing to pay for accurate, useful information. Most people do not need accurate or useful information for the majority of their needs in life -- nor do they even want it as we can tell from their revealed preferences. The web is not even all that popular compared to television. Judging from the websites of many formerly prestigious magazines, many people just use the web as an enhanced edition of TV Guide with some chat features built in. TV is many orders of magnitude more popular than computer media in the developed world. Many people are happy to pay TV subscriber fees for inaccurate but entertaining shows. The most popular programs are fantasies and sports games rather than documentary programs. >I fear that since things have been free for 20+ years, people aren't going to ever pay for written content. Someone tell Jeff Bezos that all those book sales are illusory. But yes, we should expect the web to more and more be the equivalent of a trash heap of brochures and junk publications pointing people towards higher quality options, with the occasional equivalent of a curated public library (like Archive.org). >I think people, abstractly, might be fine paying for good content. They really do when it's important to them. But what people say is important to them when other people are looking is not necessarily what is really important to them.
- dingaling 11y ago
  > but you can get every book ever written inexpensively or free from some combination of Archive.org and Amazon. Do people really believe this? I've been chasing a copy of "L'envol des Alouettes" by Charles Marchetti for years. Occasionally, once every few years, a single copy appears on amazon.fr or Abe Books for around 200 Euros and is snapped-up within hours. There is not one single digital copy of it available anywhere. And that's just one title I've had on my wishlist for over a decade.
  - jchewitt 11y ago
    You're right to correct me. Most of the works ever written have been lost to history. What I said holds for books that have been popular, historically significant, or valued enough to be widely preserved and archived.
jfoster 11y ago
It seems structured to fail. Anyone annoyed enough by ads isn't going to pay for 50% less ads when they could have 100% less ads for free with an ad blocker.
- benologist 11y ago
  Plus you forfeit up-to-substantial speed advantages when you are bidding on the ad space yourself.
- long 11y ago
  I do. I actually pay for ~30% fewer ads ($5/month on Contributor) whereas I could easily just use uBlock. There are few reasons I do this: (1) uBlock is overzealous -- it breaks some websites and I'm not interested enough to tweak it to not break them. (2) Sites I like (e.g., boingboing, The Sweethome) don't get any money when I use uBlock, but they do if I use Contributor I recognize that I'm a weird Silicon Valley type but I'm hopeful that we aren't too rare. There are dozens of us. Dozens!
archagon 11y ago
I wish there was an easy way to make micropayments for articles, in the vein of Amazon's one-click feature. Go to an article, hit a paywall, click a shiny ¢5 button, done. If the micropayment was small and I didn't have to enter my CC info more than once, I'd do it all the time. Unfortunately, this would be contrary to the way commerce works on the internet today. In order to maintain security, it would probably have to be the browser, not a third-party service, that handles your CC information. A new browser commerce protocol would have to be created, and every platform vendor would have to support it. So it would probably never happen. > I fear that since things have been free for 20+ years, people aren't going to ever pay for written content. Advertising really muddles everything and makes content feel "free", even though it's clearly not. Content producers should do a better job of making it clear that if users don't pay, they won't get their content.
- justinv 11y ago
  Flattr sort of tried to do that. It never caught on, unfortunately. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flattr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flattr
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

jchewitt 11y ago

The web is full of misleading garbage, but you can get every book ever written inexpensively or free from some combination of Archive.org and Amazon. Many books are trash, but at least we have some means of sorting them. The web is a big popularity contest, with Google search / Facebook rank being a modified popularity contest. What's popular and entertaining is unlikely to be what's true or useful. People are very willing to pay for accurate, useful information. Most people do not need accurate or useful information for the majority of their needs in life -- nor do they even want it as we can tell from their revealed preferences. The web is not even all that popular compared to television. Judging from the websites of many formerly prestigious magazines, many people just use the web as an enhanced edition of TV Guide with some chat features built in. TV is many orders of magnitude more popular than computer media in the developed world. Many people are happy to pay TV subscriber fees for inaccurate but entertaining shows. The most popular programs are fantasies and sports games rather than documentary programs. >I fear that since things have been free for 20+ years, people aren't going to ever pay for written content. Someone tell Jeff Bezos that all those book sales are illusory. But yes, we should expect the web to more and more be the equivalent of a trash heap of brochures and junk publications pointing people towards higher quality options, with the occasional equivalent of a curated public library (like Archive.org). >I think people, abstractly, might be fine paying for good content. They really do when it's important to them. But what people say is important to them when other people are looking is not necessarily what is really important to them.

dingaling 11y ago
> but you can get every book ever written inexpensively or free from some combination of Archive.org and Amazon. Do people really believe this? I've been chasing a copy of "L'envol des Alouettes" by Charles Marchetti for years. Occasionally, once every few years, a single copy appears on amazon.fr or Abe Books for around 200 Euros and is snapped-up within hours. There is not one single digital copy of it available anywhere. And that's just one title I've had on my wishlist for over a decade.
- jchewitt 11y ago
  You're right to correct me. Most of the works ever written have been lost to history. What I said holds for books that have been popular, historically significant, or valued enough to be widely preserved and archived.

jfoster 11y ago

It seems structured to fail. Anyone annoyed enough by ads isn't going to pay for 50% less ads when they could have 100% less ads for free with an ad blocker.

benologist 11y ago
Plus you forfeit up-to-substantial speed advantages when you are bidding on the ad space yourself.
long 11y ago
I do. I actually pay for ~30% fewer ads ($5/month on Contributor) whereas I could easily just use uBlock. There are few reasons I do this: (1) uBlock is overzealous -- it breaks some websites and I'm not interested enough to tweak it to not break them. (2) Sites I like (e.g., boingboing, The Sweethome) don't get any money when I use uBlock, but they do if I use Contributor I recognize that I'm a weird Silicon Valley type but I'm hopeful that we aren't too rare. There are dozens of us. Dozens!

archagon 11y ago

I wish there was an easy way to make micropayments for articles, in the vein of Amazon's one-click feature. Go to an article, hit a paywall, click a shiny ¢5 button, done. If the micropayment was small and I didn't have to enter my CC info more than once, I'd do it all the time. Unfortunately, this would be contrary to the way commerce works on the internet today. In order to maintain security, it would probably have to be the browser, not a third-party service, that handles your CC information. A new browser commerce protocol would have to be created, and every platform vendor would have to support it. So it would probably never happen. > I fear that since things have been free for 20+ years, people aren't going to ever pay for written content. Advertising really muddles everything and makes content feel "free", even though it's clearly not. Content producers should do a better job of making it clear that if users don't pay, they won't get their content.

justinv 11y ago
Flattr sort of tried to do that. It never caught on, unfortunately. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flattr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flattr
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]