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On one hand, it’s fun to imagine what a truly full-stack rewrite of the internet would allow us to do, and what it would look like. On the other hand, the curr

On one hand, it’s fun to imagine what a truly full-stack rewrite of the internet would allow us to do, and what it would look like. On the other hand, the current internet feels like a good approximation of the best trade offs for performance vs. usability in most areas, and I doubt a full rewrite would fundamentally change much about how we use the internet.

notduncansmith 6y ago
> I doubt a full rewrite would fundamentally change much about how we use the internet. I imagine that it would in fact have to support people using the internet exactly the way they do now, if it hoped to get traction.
egypturnash 6y ago
An Internet with a payment system built in from the ground up might be one that did not end up throwing its hands in the air and saying “I guess everything will be funded by ads, I dunno”. An Internet where “keep engagement high so we can serve shitloads of ads” was not the default path to financial success would be an Internet without social media that happily pushes people into ever-more controversial positions, because that’s what keeps them around longer and lets you serve more ads. Decide for yourself what social changes that would create.
- shajznnckfke 6y ago
  I don’t think this is really true. We’ve had the technological capability of micropayments for many years (since PayPal probably?), so it’s long been possible to charge for access to content on the web. If that were a model consumers preferred for text, it would be winning. Instead, most consumers will bounce from paywalled content if they can’t figure out a way in for free. In areas like music and video streaming, paid services are actually popular, because they have a different cost structure and more consumers find it worthwhile to pay to access better content with no ads.
  - Nextgrid 6y ago
    The problem is that most paywalled content wants to charge 50-100x what they would otherwise earn from ads. A typical newspaper would make maybe 10 cents off my visit if I didn't have my ad blocker, but somehow if I want to pay I need to pay a 10 dollars/month subscription even if I only intend to read a handful of articles.
    - mjevans 6y ago
      Banks are the core issue here. Micro-transactions cost too much. They really don't have to; that's just greed.
      - Nextgrid 6y ago
        There's nothing preventing a newspaper charging 10$ once to pre-pay your account and each visit debits the equivalent of their ad earnings for that page view. It would negate the impact from payment processing fees while still allowing most people to read in a cost-effective way. The problem is indeed greed, but I'm not sure the banks are the ones who are greedy here.
        dragonwriter 6y ago
        > There's nothing preventing a newspaper charging 10$ once to pre-pay your account and each visit debits the equivalent of their ad earnings for that page view. Sure there is, they'd lose enormous money that way. Because the small segment of users that would pay for the average page view are a large portion of the users most valuable to advertisers. If they charged high enough to make up for the loss of the demographic willing to pay the price, it would be an even smaller group paying very high prices. And even higher prices once you charged extra to recover the costs of developing and maintaining the separate payment and customer support system and service for that small customer base. Lots of people that are in demographics more valuable than average see stats about the average a site makes per view (or per MAU, or whatever) and says “I'd be willing to pay more than that.” What they don't realize is that they are worth more than that as advertising targets, and the people that bring the average down to what it is aren't willing to pay the average.
- Razengan 6y ago
  > An Internet with a payment system built in from the ground up Perhaps there could be a new digital currency for all and any transactions done online. Let's call it ICR. Websites and apps would only accept ICR, and pay out only in ICR, and people would convert between ICR and whatever they want, and that would be the only way to generate ICR, unlike cryptocurrencies and whatnot.
- beagle3 6y ago
  But ... that’s what tv evolved to even though payment was built in (cable, tv fee in the UK). Internet would likely have done the same.
  - donatj 6y ago
    Yup, you would pay for websites AND have ads. Given the opportunity to put ads on something, it will get ads on it. That’s just a fact of life. You’re just throwing money away otherwise.
    - kmonsen 6y ago
      That’s not really true. Netflix and HBO don’t have ads. It is possible, just very very hard to stay away from the ads temptation.
      - MikusR 6y ago
        At least Netflix has loads of ads. In the form of product placement.
        toyg 6y ago
        So much this. It’s embarrassing to see otherwise quality-products forced to prostitute themselves to the god of ads. For example, I enjoy Brooklyn 99 like the next guy, but the way their writing bends towards lame product-placement every other episode is really jarring.
      - beagle3 6y ago
        Netflix and HBO aren’t what I was referring to - I was referring to “real” over-the-air and cable television. Cable is paid for everywhere by channel/package. OTA is paid for in many places in the world through e.g. tv license in the Uk. Ads still all over. In contrast to op assuming built in payment would have had replaced ads.
    - DenseComet 6y ago
      TV sets themselves have ads built in. TVs and other hardware was sold for years at profitable margins, and then some genius realized they could undercut competitors by putting ads in the interface and making money later. After that, it was just a race to the bottom.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- miki123211 6y ago
  Such a payment system would need to work for the unbanked (including the underage). That would probably mean accounts that aren't tied to personal IDs, and governments hate that. As bad as ads and tracking are, they truly enable everyone to use the internet, no matter the background, financial or legal status, age or nationality. In my view, that makes up for all the problems tracking causes.
- jnurmine 6y ago
  Somehow advertisements serve a dual purpose. The other side is the "beat your drum so people can find your great product" mind-set, or, depending on your point of view, the fightclubian impetus to "make them buy shit they don't need"; the other side is the profiling of the users. If someone goes full-on "modern internet experience" without ad blockers, third party script blockers, cookie blocking, canvas fingerprinting blocking, etc. etc. the dataset collectable from the user behavior is rather large. And this allows for a detailed profile of the user to be built over time. But what for? Why so much detail? Why so pervasive collection of online behavior and real-life interests? To sell more things to people? It seems like advertising would work just fine with a much coarser scale. Is it something more exotic, like building a "digital twin" of every citizen out there to predict what they will do and how they behave? Or can it just be the mundane ads? Anyway, I've wondered those questions and namely why the profiling part must be so pervasive and massive in scale. Can it not work in lower resolution? PS. The TV-series Colony contains one possible "answer" but although it is an entertaining and paranoid thought, the real-life plausibility of that answer is rather low :)

notduncansmith 6y ago

> I doubt a full rewrite would fundamentally change much about how we use the internet. I imagine that it would in fact have to support people using the internet exactly the way they do now, if it hoped to get traction.

egypturnash 6y ago

An Internet with a payment system built in from the ground up might be one that did not end up throwing its hands in the air and saying “I guess everything will be funded by ads, I dunno”. An Internet where “keep engagement high so we can serve shitloads of ads” was not the default path to financial success would be an Internet without social media that happily pushes people into ever-more controversial positions, because that’s what keeps them around longer and lets you serve more ads. Decide for yourself what social changes that would create.

shajznnckfke 6y ago
I don’t think this is really true. We’ve had the technological capability of micropayments for many years (since PayPal probably?), so it’s long been possible to charge for access to content on the web. If that were a model consumers preferred for text, it would be winning. Instead, most consumers will bounce from paywalled content if they can’t figure out a way in for free. In areas like music and video streaming, paid services are actually popular, because they have a different cost structure and more consumers find it worthwhile to pay to access better content with no ads.
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  The problem is that most paywalled content wants to charge 50-100x what they would otherwise earn from ads. A typical newspaper would make maybe 10 cents off my visit if I didn't have my ad blocker, but somehow if I want to pay I need to pay a 10 dollars/month subscription even if I only intend to read a handful of articles.
  - mjevans 6y ago
    Banks are the core issue here. Micro-transactions cost too much. They really don't have to; that's just greed.
    - Nextgrid 6y ago
      There's nothing preventing a newspaper charging 10$ once to pre-pay your account and each visit debits the equivalent of their ad earnings for that page view. It would negate the impact from payment processing fees while still allowing most people to read in a cost-effective way. The problem is indeed greed, but I'm not sure the banks are the ones who are greedy here.
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        > There's nothing preventing a newspaper charging 10$ once to pre-pay your account and each visit debits the equivalent of their ad earnings for that page view. Sure there is, they'd lose enormous money that way. Because the small segment of users that would pay for the average page view are a large portion of the users most valuable to advertisers. If they charged high enough to make up for the loss of the demographic willing to pay the price, it would be an even smaller group paying very high prices. And even higher prices once you charged extra to recover the costs of developing and maintaining the separate payment and customer support system and service for that small customer base. Lots of people that are in demographics more valuable than average see stats about the average a site makes per view (or per MAU, or whatever) and says “I'd be willing to pay more than that.” What they don't realize is that they are worth more than that as advertising targets, and the people that bring the average down to what it is aren't willing to pay the average.
Razengan 6y ago
> An Internet with a payment system built in from the ground up Perhaps there could be a new digital currency for all and any transactions done online. Let's call it ICR. Websites and apps would only accept ICR, and pay out only in ICR, and people would convert between ICR and whatever they want, and that would be the only way to generate ICR, unlike cryptocurrencies and whatnot.
beagle3 6y ago
But ... that’s what tv evolved to even though payment was built in (cable, tv fee in the UK). Internet would likely have done the same.
- donatj 6y ago
  Yup, you would pay for websites AND have ads. Given the opportunity to put ads on something, it will get ads on it. That’s just a fact of life. You’re just throwing money away otherwise.
  - kmonsen 6y ago
    That’s not really true. Netflix and HBO don’t have ads. It is possible, just very very hard to stay away from the ads temptation.
    - MikusR 6y ago
      At least Netflix has loads of ads. In the form of product placement.
      - toyg 6y ago
        So much this. It’s embarrassing to see otherwise quality-products forced to prostitute themselves to the god of ads. For example, I enjoy Brooklyn 99 like the next guy, but the way their writing bends towards lame product-placement every other episode is really jarring.
    - beagle3 6y ago
      Netflix and HBO aren’t what I was referring to - I was referring to “real” over-the-air and cable television. Cable is paid for everywhere by channel/package. OTA is paid for in many places in the world through e.g. tv license in the Uk. Ads still all over. In contrast to op assuming built in payment would have had replaced ads.
  - DenseComet 6y ago
    TV sets themselves have ads built in. TVs and other hardware was sold for years at profitable margins, and then some genius realized they could undercut competitors by putting ads in the interface and making money later. After that, it was just a race to the bottom.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
miki123211 6y ago
Such a payment system would need to work for the unbanked (including the underage). That would probably mean accounts that aren't tied to personal IDs, and governments hate that. As bad as ads and tracking are, they truly enable everyone to use the internet, no matter the background, financial or legal status, age or nationality. In my view, that makes up for all the problems tracking causes.
jnurmine 6y ago
Somehow advertisements serve a dual purpose. The other side is the "beat your drum so people can find your great product" mind-set, or, depending on your point of view, the fightclubian impetus to "make them buy shit they don't need"; the other side is the profiling of the users. If someone goes full-on "modern internet experience" without ad blockers, third party script blockers, cookie blocking, canvas fingerprinting blocking, etc. etc. the dataset collectable from the user behavior is rather large. And this allows for a detailed profile of the user to be built over time. But what for? Why so much detail? Why so pervasive collection of online behavior and real-life interests? To sell more things to people? It seems like advertising would work just fine with a much coarser scale. Is it something more exotic, like building a "digital twin" of every citizen out there to predict what they will do and how they behave? Or can it just be the mundane ads? Anyway, I've wondered those questions and namely why the profiling part must be so pervasive and massive in scale. Can it not work in lower resolution? PS. The TV-series Colony contains one possible "answer" but although it is an entertaining and paranoid thought, the real-life plausibility of that answer is rather low :)