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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 platf

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.

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.