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> think someday someone's going to realize just how silly the advertisement game is, and as long as the payment structure is in place, we can get a much better

> think someday someone's going to realize just how silly the advertisement game is, and as long as the payment structure is in place, we can get a much better web experience. You're not the first, or tenth, or millionth person to think of this. Hell, even just limited to HN, micropayments and general content subscriptions have been discussed for a decade. Consumers are in a way that equilibrium where they don't want to pay for web content (esp text web content), and the path to getting them to the equilibrium of paying without thinking about it (like with Netflix or power) is unclear. It's not just theoretical: Companies like Google have also been experimenting with this for yeaaars, to diversify away from the risk (whether regulatory or technological or otherwise) of relying on ads as a primary revenue source. There are complications beyond consumer behavior, like bringing the colosally complicated ad ecosystem under a single payments system (since nobody wants to pay for a service that only removes some fraction of ads from the web).

majewsky 7y ago
> Consumers are in a way that equilibrium where they don't want to pay for web content (esp text web content), and the path to getting them to the equilibrium of paying without thinking about it (like with Netflix or power) is unclear. You disprove yourself by mentioning Netflix. The path is absolutely clear: Customers are willing to pay for added value that's proportionate to the cost. The problem for publishers is they do not add any value that would justify customers paying enough for their content. Few people will pay for a newspaper subscription when there are 10 other newspapers offering 90% of the same content for free. There are models that work, e.g. Patreon, but those usually don't scale up to, say, the Washington Post or CNN.
- wutbrodo 7y ago
  > You disprove yourself by mentioning Netflix This isn't how equilbria work. Netflix was a superior product to piracy in many ways: no perceived legal risk, reliable access, high quality guaranteed, way better ease of use. These barriers were high enough that plenty of people didn't pirate at all and stuck with nonsense like DVDs for way too long, so the incentive path pointed smoothly towards switching to Netflix, a Pareto improvement for non-pirates and a fairly easy trade-off for pirates. There's no such path for web content: adblockers are unquestionably legal, easy to set up, provide a better experience, and even non-users of adblockers have a trillion non-paywalled sources in an ecosystem where it's tough for strong brand loyalty to survive en masse. What advantages do you imagine a paywall option offering to people when their alternative is better in almost every respect? > There are models that work, e.g. Patreon, but those usually don't scale up to, say, the Washington Post or CNN.
OJFord 7y ago
I think things like Apple Pay in Safari (not that I use either of them) might enable some movement here - it'll be easier to get people used to paying for content in 'micropayments', i.e. not 'subscribe for £2pcm' but '10p for the rest of the article'
- ghaff 7y ago
  (One) problem with micropayments is that you're then in the situation of constantly being in a state of "Is the rest of this article worth 10p to me?" Years ago, Clay Shirky described this as a problem of mental transaction costs and there's a lot to be said for it. What I think is more likely--but still pretty speculative--is that an aggregator (like Apple News) could create a sufficiently large stable of publications to offer as a subscription competitive with the handful of pubs like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal that are strong enough brands to go their own way. One thing that's very unclear is whether the mass market is willing to pay the cost associated with that subscription. Probably not. Today's evidence suggests that people are generally more open to subscriptions than pay-as-you-go for content. Music in particular has pretty much transitioned to subscription for the most part.
  - wutbrodo 7y ago
    I think this risk is oversold as a steady-state problem: nobody feels this way about every tiny marginal bit of electricity use, because we've habituated to a longer cycle of feedback (ie power use was high this month, try to be more mindful on average). That being said, I think this is one of the biggest hurdles in the transition from where we are to a payments-based system.
Nasrudith 7y ago
Really I think micropayments are a fool's errand because it is inherently too "fraudable" not in the legal sense but that both sides can easily be left unhappy with no recourse in a many to many relationship. No gates and it is just another donate button. Add a gate and clickbait and bait and switch becomes ten times worse. A reputation system would be dystopian and doomed to failure. Personal subscriptions for websites might work for those who are big enough but "big enough" is far larger than entities which probably should have been trustbusted several decades ago and it is still too fragmented for that purpose. Not helping is that they are always too greedy in price expected from ad viewer vs subscriptions - because of how few bother.

majewsky 7y ago

> Consumers are in a way that equilibrium where they don't want to pay for web content (esp text web content), and the path to getting them to the equilibrium of paying without thinking about it (like with Netflix or power) is unclear. You disprove yourself by mentioning Netflix. The path is absolutely clear: Customers are willing to pay for added value that's proportionate to the cost. The problem for publishers is they do not add any value that would justify customers paying enough for their content. Few people will pay for a newspaper subscription when there are 10 other newspapers offering 90% of the same content for free. There are models that work, e.g. Patreon, but those usually don't scale up to, say, the Washington Post or CNN.

wutbrodo 7y ago
> You disprove yourself by mentioning Netflix This isn't how equilbria work. Netflix was a superior product to piracy in many ways: no perceived legal risk, reliable access, high quality guaranteed, way better ease of use. These barriers were high enough that plenty of people didn't pirate at all and stuck with nonsense like DVDs for way too long, so the incentive path pointed smoothly towards switching to Netflix, a Pareto improvement for non-pirates and a fairly easy trade-off for pirates. There's no such path for web content: adblockers are unquestionably legal, easy to set up, provide a better experience, and even non-users of adblockers have a trillion non-paywalled sources in an ecosystem where it's tough for strong brand loyalty to survive en masse. What advantages do you imagine a paywall option offering to people when their alternative is better in almost every respect? > There are models that work, e.g. Patreon, but those usually don't scale up to, say, the Washington Post or CNN.

OJFord 7y ago

I think things like Apple Pay in Safari (not that I use either of them) might enable some movement here - it'll be easier to get people used to paying for content in 'micropayments', i.e. not 'subscribe for £2pcm' but '10p for the rest of the article'

ghaff 7y ago
(One) problem with micropayments is that you're then in the situation of constantly being in a state of "Is the rest of this article worth 10p to me?" Years ago, Clay Shirky described this as a problem of mental transaction costs and there's a lot to be said for it. What I think is more likely--but still pretty speculative--is that an aggregator (like Apple News) could create a sufficiently large stable of publications to offer as a subscription competitive with the handful of pubs like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal that are strong enough brands to go their own way. One thing that's very unclear is whether the mass market is willing to pay the cost associated with that subscription. Probably not. Today's evidence suggests that people are generally more open to subscriptions than pay-as-you-go for content. Music in particular has pretty much transitioned to subscription for the most part.
- wutbrodo 7y ago
  I think this risk is oversold as a steady-state problem: nobody feels this way about every tiny marginal bit of electricity use, because we've habituated to a longer cycle of feedback (ie power use was high this month, try to be more mindful on average). That being said, I think this is one of the biggest hurdles in the transition from where we are to a payments-based system.

Nasrudith 7y ago

Really I think micropayments are a fool's errand because it is inherently too "fraudable" not in the legal sense but that both sides can easily be left unhappy with no recourse in a many to many relationship. No gates and it is just another donate button. Add a gate and clickbait and bait and switch becomes ten times worse. A reputation system would be dystopian and doomed to failure. Personal subscriptions for websites might work for those who are big enough but "big enough" is far larger than entities which probably should have been trustbusted several decades ago and it is still too fragmented for that purpose. Not helping is that they are always too greedy in price expected from ad viewer vs subscriptions - because of how few bother.