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It's all just spending though. Tide is trying to get you to pay a little extra for the name brand over the generic. Instead of a Toyota SUV you could have picke

It's all just spending though. Tide is trying to get you to pay a little extra for the name brand over the generic. Instead of a Toyota SUV you could have picked up a used beater - or kept driving the car you have for a few more thousand miles. Netflix wants you to shell out extra "discretionary" money to watch some TV shows you don't need to see. And millions of people do it, because they want to. If it cost money to read a a website, then people might do that too - if they deemed the content worthy of their hard-earned dollars. Millions of people already pony up $1000 for the latest smartphone so they can read stuff online at all hours of the day. I really don't think the web creators should be this worried about whether or not people actually want their stuff. They desperately want it; in fact, most people are probably literally addicted to it. Of course, maybe you're trying to draw the distinction between paying for a good and voluntarily making a donation. If that's the case, I'm with you - the latter idea is a loser. But if popular websites just made you pay to use them, and the amount was tiny, and the actual process of paying was completely frictionless and unnoticeable in terms of the browsing experience, then people would totally do it. I think a lot of people think they learned this fundamental truth that people don't want to pay for things to read on the internet, when what they really learned is that people don't want to be interrupted and asked for their credit card details. But if you can make that process seamless, people will happily fritter away thousands clicking through links.

tripzilch 7y ago
> But if popular websites just made you pay to use them, and the amount was tiny, and the actual process of paying was completely frictionless and unnoticeable in terms of the browsing experience, then people would totally do it. People would maybe do it, but ads wouldn't go away because there's x times more money to be made in the ad business than people micropayments.
galaxyLogic 7y ago
I think on demand TV works great, you want to watch a movie hit the remote and the cost will be part of your monthly bill. If something similar existed for the web it would be great
- jfim 7y ago
  It's highly dependent on implementation. It's too much mental load to determine if that article you just read is worth $0.02 or not. Brave has a model where creators are automatically tipped, based on usage, which makes more sense imo.
  - volkk 7y ago
    why is that different from say...a movie youre going rent on apple TV or in the theater?
  - Ajedi32 7y ago
    The main issue with Brave's funding model is that it relies on consumer goodwill. While people might be willing to spend $0.02 to read a news article, they're less likely to allocate $10/month to funding online content creators "just because". There has to be some sort of incentive for most people to spend their money; if they can get the same experience for free, only a small minority will ever bother to pay. So the question is, how do you provide consumers with such an incentive without charging for the content itself (as that can be problematic for the reason you mentioned), without offering "an ad-free experience" for paid users (as Brave blocks ads by default regardless of whether users pay or not), and without requiring users to incur the mental load of trying to decide whether the paid experience is worth it over the free one? A difficult problem to say the least.
    - galaxyLogic 7y ago
      I often hit the free limit on say articles on New York Times and similar sites. After seeing the article title I am often interested enough to click on it to read it. But the count of free articles is full so I can't read the article. Now if it said "If you want to read this article there will be $0.50 charge in your next month's internet bill, I would probably go ahead and click and pay it in the next bill. Problem is I don't want to open an account with just every possible newspaper and magazine on the web. What is needed is some common mechanism for most if not all content providers. Maybe $0.50 is too much. Maybe $0.25 would be more like ok.

tripzilch 7y ago

> But if popular websites just made you pay to use them, and the amount was tiny, and the actual process of paying was completely frictionless and unnoticeable in terms of the browsing experience, then people would totally do it. People would maybe do it, but ads wouldn't go away because there's x times more money to be made in the ad business than people micropayments.

galaxyLogic 7y ago

I think on demand TV works great, you want to watch a movie hit the remote and the cost will be part of your monthly bill. If something similar existed for the web it would be great

jfim 7y ago
It's highly dependent on implementation. It's too much mental load to determine if that article you just read is worth $0.02 or not. Brave has a model where creators are automatically tipped, based on usage, which makes more sense imo.
- volkk 7y ago
  why is that different from say...a movie youre going rent on apple TV or in the theater?
- Ajedi32 7y ago
  The main issue with Brave's funding model is that it relies on consumer goodwill. While people might be willing to spend $0.02 to read a news article, they're less likely to allocate $10/month to funding online content creators "just because". There has to be some sort of incentive for most people to spend their money; if they can get the same experience for free, only a small minority will ever bother to pay. So the question is, how do you provide consumers with such an incentive without charging for the content itself (as that can be problematic for the reason you mentioned), without offering "an ad-free experience" for paid users (as Brave blocks ads by default regardless of whether users pay or not), and without requiring users to incur the mental load of trying to decide whether the paid experience is worth it over the free one? A difficult problem to say the least.
  - galaxyLogic 7y ago
    I often hit the free limit on say articles on New York Times and similar sites. After seeing the article title I am often interested enough to click on it to read it. But the count of free articles is full so I can't read the article. Now if it said "If you want to read this article there will be $0.50 charge in your next month's internet bill, I would probably go ahead and click and pay it in the next bill. Problem is I don't want to open an account with just every possible newspaper and magazine on the web. What is needed is some common mechanism for most if not all content providers. Maybe $0.50 is too much. Maybe $0.25 would be more like ok.