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A standard for micropayment for content needs to evolve. Our relationships to publishers have changed substantially. I would be willing to pay per read from sou

A standard for micropayment for content needs to evolve. Our relationships to publishers have changed substantially. I would be willing to pay per read from sources like The Guardian, New York Times, The Economist, etc, but I am not frequent enough to want to subscribe. For the citizen who wants to get their information from different sources across the globe and political spectrum, it gets unreasonable to expect subscriptions. While something like Netflix/Spotify would be nice from a user/consumer perspective, there is both the difficulty of gathering everyone under one platform and the risks of having a single (or a few) number of brokers of news across the board.

overlordalex 8y ago
We have a local news website that I think has a realistic model. When you view an article with an ad-blocker it shows you a dialog with a variety of options: 1. Whitelist the site 2. "Nah, journalists should go hungry" - this dismisses the popup and lets you read the article with your blocker intact 3. 5c - read the article ad-free 4. 10c - 1 hour of no-ads 5. 30c - 1 day of no-ads I've converted to US cents, but even in local currency think these prices are extremely reasonable, and I'd love to see more sites offer similar rates
- vageli 8y ago
  Does the service require you to maintain a wallet with them? As in, you deposit money and transactions are drawn from your deposit? Otherwise, I can't see how accepting such a low amount per transaction could be feasible.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
carapace 8y ago
The fact that "micropayments" weren't even mentioned in this article leads me to dismiss it. There still doesn't seem to be a "Twitter of Micropayments" yet. Gratipay shut down, (RIP) https://gratipay.news/the-end-cbfba8f50981?gi=54bc4ed25327 https://gratipay.news/the-end-cbfba8f50981?gi=54bc4ed25327 Patreon takes a percentage, which, to me, seems unjustifiable.
- always_good 8y ago
  You suggest that the lack of even mentioning micropayments leads you to dismiss the article. But then you point out that there is no viable micropayments platform. Doesn't seem like there's much to mention beyond "yup, still doesn't exist."
  - carapace 8y ago
    > You suggest that the lack of even mentioning micropayments leads you to dismiss the article. I didn't suggest, I stated it baldly. > But then you point out that there is no viable micropayments platform. No I didn't. I mentioned one that is defunct, and one that is popular but that I have a problem with personally. The article I linked to about Gratipay references Liberapay (https://liberapay.com/ https://liberapay.com/) and Open Collective (https://opencollective.com/ https://opencollective.com/) but I didn't want to mention them because I haven't checked them out myself. There are probably others. > Doesn't seem like there's much to mention beyond "yup, still doesn't exist." And yet this low bar is unsurmounted? Wrote a whole article about "Subscription Hell" yet won't step over to the watercooler full of lemonade. Good day sir.
  - ajross 8y ago
    > But then you point out that there is no viable micropayments platform. Doesn't seem like there's much to mention beyond "yup, still doesn't exist." Sure there is: "Micropayments are fundamentally infeasible". Which is to say, payments are trivial to do. There have been dozens and dozens of startups doing online payments in various schemes since the beginning of the internet. But the fraud problem is not solvable on that kind of scale. Batching payments such that you buy one "thing" for at least a few dollars gives some level of assurance that one human being looked at the transaction and that the seller gave enough thought to be sure it was worth selling as a unit. That all falls apart when you get to "one article" scale. You want this to be a purchase that the user doesn't even thing about (because seriously if I have to stop and think whether I want to pay $0.13 to read an article the answer is "NO"). But without that promise of thought it becomes impossible to reasonably authenticate a transaction. Users will be absolutely flooded with fraud schemes tricking them into OKing these tiny things. This is what killed ad-supported platforms too.
alexbeloi 8y ago
This is what Blendle offers according to u/ChuckMcM, price per article decided by publisher, ranges from 9c to $1.99, average 25c.
koonsolo 8y ago
IMHO, cryptocurrencies like Nano offer a great solution to these micro-payments use cases. (Everytime I talk about cryptocurrencies on HN, I get downvoted without any proper response. So bring it on! ;))

overlordalex 8y ago

We have a local news website that I think has a realistic model. When you view an article with an ad-blocker it shows you a dialog with a variety of options: 1. Whitelist the site 2. "Nah, journalists should go hungry" - this dismisses the popup and lets you read the article with your blocker intact 3. 5c - read the article ad-free 4. 10c - 1 hour of no-ads 5. 30c - 1 day of no-ads I've converted to US cents, but even in local currency think these prices are extremely reasonable, and I'd love to see more sites offer similar rates

vageli 8y ago
Does the service require you to maintain a wallet with them? As in, you deposit money and transactions are drawn from your deposit? Otherwise, I can't see how accepting such a low amount per transaction could be feasible.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

carapace 8y ago

The fact that "micropayments" weren't even mentioned in this article leads me to dismiss it. There still doesn't seem to be a "Twitter of Micropayments" yet. Gratipay shut down, (RIP) https://gratipay.news/the-end-cbfba8f50981?gi=54bc4ed25327 https://gratipay.news/the-end-cbfba8f50981?gi=54bc4ed25327 Patreon takes a percentage, which, to me, seems unjustifiable.

always_good 8y ago
You suggest that the lack of even mentioning micropayments leads you to dismiss the article. But then you point out that there is no viable micropayments platform. Doesn't seem like there's much to mention beyond "yup, still doesn't exist."
- carapace 8y ago
  > You suggest that the lack of even mentioning micropayments leads you to dismiss the article. I didn't suggest, I stated it baldly. > But then you point out that there is no viable micropayments platform. No I didn't. I mentioned one that is defunct, and one that is popular but that I have a problem with personally. The article I linked to about Gratipay references Liberapay (https://liberapay.com/ https://liberapay.com/) and Open Collective (https://opencollective.com/ https://opencollective.com/) but I didn't want to mention them because I haven't checked them out myself. There are probably others. > Doesn't seem like there's much to mention beyond "yup, still doesn't exist." And yet this low bar is unsurmounted? Wrote a whole article about "Subscription Hell" yet won't step over to the watercooler full of lemonade. Good day sir.
- ajross 8y ago
  > But then you point out that there is no viable micropayments platform. Doesn't seem like there's much to mention beyond "yup, still doesn't exist." Sure there is: "Micropayments are fundamentally infeasible". Which is to say, payments are trivial to do. There have been dozens and dozens of startups doing online payments in various schemes since the beginning of the internet. But the fraud problem is not solvable on that kind of scale. Batching payments such that you buy one "thing" for at least a few dollars gives some level of assurance that one human being looked at the transaction and that the seller gave enough thought to be sure it was worth selling as a unit. That all falls apart when you get to "one article" scale. You want this to be a purchase that the user doesn't even thing about (because seriously if I have to stop and think whether I want to pay $0.13 to read an article the answer is "NO"). But without that promise of thought it becomes impossible to reasonably authenticate a transaction. Users will be absolutely flooded with fraud schemes tricking them into OKing these tiny things. This is what killed ad-supported platforms too.

alexbeloi 8y ago

This is what Blendle offers according to u/ChuckMcM, price per article decided by publisher, ranges from 9c to $1.99, average 25c.

koonsolo 8y ago

IMHO, cryptocurrencies like Nano offer a great solution to these micro-payments use cases. (Everytime I talk about cryptocurrencies on HN, I get downvoted without any proper response. So bring it on! ;))