9 ms·

What we really need is for the Fed to enable micro transactions. Make transferring money so easy and cheap that Visa et al can be disrupted. Facebook/Google wou

What we really need is for the Fed to enable micro transactions. Make transferring money so easy and cheap that Visa et al can be disrupted. Facebook/Google would also be disrupted—people would be willing to pay $.03 to watch a video or read an article instead of handing over their data.

dboreham 6y ago
People paid $$$ to politicians to not have that happen.
telotortium 6y ago
> people would be willing to pay $.03 to watch a video or read an article Nope. Maybe for 1% of the price I'd be willing to do microtransactions.
stcredzero 6y ago
This has been said before. Everyone who is invested in the advertisement model will then start to hate on the idea, for obvious reasons. In particular, media, including journalists who cover these ideas. However, the advertisement model truly sucks. It severely dilutes the interest of the actual consumer and actual fans, in favor of big companies who buy the advertisements. EDIT: As I mention below, this isn't theory. This debate happened between Penny Arcade and Scott McCloud nearly two decades ago.
- gruez 6y ago
  >In particular, media, including journalists who cover these ideas. Why would they care? They still get paid in the end.
  - RIMR 6y ago
    They sometimes get more than just payment. If a publication promises to show an ad for a specific company, before a visitor can read a specific article, that company try to help drive visitors to that article to drive more ad views. This is why (using Twitter as an example) you sometimes see news articles for seemingly unrelated content show up as promoted Tweets straight from the journalist with "Sponsored by T-Mobile" at the bottom. Chances are, clicking through to the article will also lead to a T-Mobile advertisement.
  - stcredzero 6y ago
    Modulo some huge disruption. Most people are naturally reactionary, especially when it comes to fundamental changes in their livelihood. I'm not talking in theory. This is history. This debate literally already happened almost two decades ago. Scott McCloud and Penny Arcade!
  - 52-6F-62 6y ago
    I work in the “traditional” media—software not journalism. Ad sales are only celebrated for the money they bring in. Any optimizations around that are only there because they serve to increase as revenues, like any readership analytics. In my experience, and I can’t speak for them, but it appears to me the journalists, at least any of the ones I’ve worked with, do not care where that money comes from. I think they’d prefer if it all could come directly from readership. I think it would serve to be more validating in more than one way. To that end I think proposing that journalists (as a single entity, no less) would decry the diminishing need for advertising in their industry without actually losing revenues is a bit of a loaded take.
    - stcredzero 6y ago
      I hope that can happen. I'm not sure if enough journalists are that far-seeing.
- weird-eye-issue 6y ago
  Actually news media would be lucky to get $.03 from a single pageview. Their RPM is quite low due to the lack of targeted audience.
- r00fus 6y ago
  You think micropayments will somehow get rid of ads? There are a multitude of noteworthy examples where you pay for a product and still get ads (Cable, Hulu, unskippable DVD sections, etc). What will really curb the online ad industry is the ability for consumers to control their privacy, and make personal info a liability.
  - stcredzero 6y ago
    You think micropayments will somehow get rid of ads? No. However, it would theoretically give content creators who don't want to serve the interests of advertisers an alternative source of income that allows this. Basically, do what Patreon does, but with even less friction, and far more flexibly.
    - sofixa 6y ago
      It already exists and it's called Web Monetization. I recently wrote an article on it: https://atodorov.me/2021/03/07/please-support-web-monetization-if-you-want-less-ads-on-the-web/ https://atodorov.me/2021/03/07/please-support-web-monetizati...
- spullara 6y ago
  You should be able to get a report from publishing platforms on how much people paid for your cookie (per month?) just to better understand how much it would cost to not see ads. I've toyed with the idea of a "no ad" ad network that only bids on their own customers and replaces ads with either nothing or content of your choice. You end up paying a small premium on the amount they had to pay to remove ads. EDIT: Something like this but for consumer viewing rather than for the content publisher: https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/10/21319938/youtube-monetization-metric-ad-revenue-cpm-rpm-alternative-memberships-premium https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/10/21319938/youtube-monetiza...
gamblor956 6y ago
The Fed does not prevent banks from enabling microtransactions. It simply isn't profitable for banks to provide microtransaction services, especially considering that all microtransaction services to date have failed. (Contrast to P2P payment services like Venmo, which have flourished over the same time period.)
tehwebguy 6y ago
This is possible literally now, but barely anyone actually wants it. - Full time content creators just want discoverability and traffic to their content, they have a thousand ways to monetize with ad revenue just being icing for many - Content consumers just want to watch their content, ads aren't annoying enough for most people to pay $11.99 to unlock all of YouTube ad-free (~13 videos / day @ $0.03 / video) None of the current draw to the currently dominant platforms would be moved an inch by some other platform existing with microtransactions.
- grumple 6y ago
  > - Content consumers just want to watch their content, ads aren't annoying enough for most people to pay $11.99 to unlock all of YouTube ad-free (~13 videos / day @ $0.03 / video) Bigger problem for youtube, imo, is that ad-block works on desktop, and also they don't have any content most of us couldn't live without.
  - tyrust 6y ago
    Those problems might not be as big as you think. >More than 70% of YouTube watch time comes from mobile devices. >Over 2 billion logged-in users visit YouTube each month, and every day people watch over a billion hours of video and generate billions of views. from https://www.youtube.com/intl/en-GB/about/press/ https://www.youtube.com/intl/en-GB/about/press/
    - silicon2401 6y ago
      obligatory plug for firefox for android, which allows adblock on mobile. it's not as slick as the youtube app, but it's handy if you don't want to deal with the ads
lifty 6y ago
I recently started playing with the Breez wallet (https://breez.technology https://breez.technology) and they introduced a podcast player directly in the app, and small payments are sent to the author every few seconds, while you listen to the podcast episode. It's pretty nifty and I like it. If there would be widespread support in browsers for this kind of technology, I could see it get to mainstream adoption.
- hossbeast 6y ago
  Interesting, why is this app under /apps/testing/com.breez.client ? I also note that, searching for "breez" on the google play store yields no results. Is the app not really launched yet?
  - lifty 6y ago
    You’re right, I installed it using TestFlight on my iPhone. I guess they don’t have a proper release yet.
reedjosh 6y ago
I really don't want a centralized organization to have visibility of all transactions along with the power to cut them off.
arcticbull 6y ago
Micropayments are a bad idea that feels like a good idea. They're bad for a fundamental human reason - each decision carries with it emotional and psychological burden. Make a few in a day and you land in decision fatigue [1]. Weighing the value of a purchase no matter how small over and over again makes the whole experience an utter chore. There is a paradox in that "people who lack choices seem to want them and often will fight for them", yet at the same time, "people find that making many choices can be [psychologically] aversive." [1] There's no technical reason why any wallet operator today, like PayPal can't do micropayments except people don't want them. They think they do, but they don't. Concrete example: For most people, it's always been cheaper to just buy the content you want to watch from iTunes one at a time - and own it forever! But everyone uses Netflix instead. They continue to use Netflix even as it has less and less of what they actually wanted to watch in the first place! In the battle of more expensive vs more decision making, more expensive always wins. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_fatigue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_fatigue
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- com2kid 6y ago
  > Concrete example: It's always been cheaper to just buy the content you want to watch from iTunes, but everyone uses Netflix instead. They continue to use Netflix even as it has less and less of what they actually wanted to watch in the first place! In the battle of more expensive vs more decision making, more expensive always wins. No way is that true. A single season of a TV show varies from $10 to $20 on iTunes[1]. Movies are $10-$15 [2]. For anything beyond light viewing, Netflix is a clear win. Watch 2 movies a month on it and you are well over break even! Now if you buy from iTunes, it is only pay once. But for people like me who almost never rewatch a movie, ownership is irrelevant. Streaming is a hands down winner! [1] https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/robot-chicken-season-1/id203874701 https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/robot-chicken-season-1... https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/archer-danger-island-season-9/id1363208365 https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/archer-danger-island-s... https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/the-office-season-3/id192599752 https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/the-office-season-3/id... [2] https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/back-to-the-future-part-ii/id380040080 https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/back-to-the-future-part-ii... https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/the-divergent-series-allegiant/id1090135578 https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/the-divergent-series-alleg...
TheBlight 6y ago
Never mind the question of why you think the Fed would be well-suited to provide micro-transactions, they've been possible via centralized systems for years. The issue seems to be there is no market for them. See this PDF for a theory: https://nakamotoinstitute.org/static/docs/micropayments-and-mental-transaction-costs.pdf https://nakamotoinstitute.org/static/docs/micropayments-and-...
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Finally, something Nick and I actually agree on lol. That's a great write-up, too - thanks for sharing.
lm28469 6y ago
> instead of handing over their data. If every article and every video you watch has to be paid for they'll have as much if not more data about you...
- ipaddr 6y ago
  This is it. Any payment will connect a person more directly than the random targeting we get now connecting using sites visited, words you share with siri and what you put in your facebook profile.
8ytecoder 6y ago
Amazon attempted to do this with Amazon Flexible Payments Service [1]. It didn't get much adoption. [1] https://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2007/08/the_amazon_flexible_payment_se.html https://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2007/08/the_amazon_flex...
hahahahe 6y ago
I don’t know why Visa/MC even exist in 2021. Literal financial leeches.
_peeley 6y ago
I think this is a little too optimistic regarding what consumers are willing to pay for. The Original Sin of the Internet was subsidizing everything via advertising revenue, allowing businesses to present services as "free" to end users (in reality, you're paying with your personal privacy). This culture has taken root very deep inside mainstream culture to the point that the average person would think it ridiculous to pay money for something they've been able to do for "free" for decades now.
antb123 6y ago
Lightning... Otherwise Stellar XLM, Bitcoin LN

dboreham 6y ago

People paid $$$ to politicians to not have that happen.

telotortium 6y ago

> people would be willing to pay $.03 to watch a video or read an article Nope. Maybe for 1% of the price I'd be willing to do microtransactions.

stcredzero 6y ago

This has been said before. Everyone who is invested in the advertisement model will then start to hate on the idea, for obvious reasons. In particular, media, including journalists who cover these ideas. However, the advertisement model truly sucks. It severely dilutes the interest of the actual consumer and actual fans, in favor of big companies who buy the advertisements. EDIT: As I mention below, this isn't theory. This debate happened between Penny Arcade and Scott McCloud nearly two decades ago.

gruez 6y ago
>In particular, media, including journalists who cover these ideas. Why would they care? They still get paid in the end.
- RIMR 6y ago
  They sometimes get more than just payment. If a publication promises to show an ad for a specific company, before a visitor can read a specific article, that company try to help drive visitors to that article to drive more ad views. This is why (using Twitter as an example) you sometimes see news articles for seemingly unrelated content show up as promoted Tweets straight from the journalist with "Sponsored by T-Mobile" at the bottom. Chances are, clicking through to the article will also lead to a T-Mobile advertisement.
- stcredzero 6y ago
  Modulo some huge disruption. Most people are naturally reactionary, especially when it comes to fundamental changes in their livelihood. I'm not talking in theory. This is history. This debate literally already happened almost two decades ago. Scott McCloud and Penny Arcade!
- 52-6F-62 6y ago
  I work in the “traditional” media—software not journalism. Ad sales are only celebrated for the money they bring in. Any optimizations around that are only there because they serve to increase as revenues, like any readership analytics. In my experience, and I can’t speak for them, but it appears to me the journalists, at least any of the ones I’ve worked with, do not care where that money comes from. I think they’d prefer if it all could come directly from readership. I think it would serve to be more validating in more than one way. To that end I think proposing that journalists (as a single entity, no less) would decry the diminishing need for advertising in their industry without actually losing revenues is a bit of a loaded take.
  - stcredzero 6y ago
    I hope that can happen. I'm not sure if enough journalists are that far-seeing.
weird-eye-issue 6y ago
Actually news media would be lucky to get $.03 from a single pageview. Their RPM is quite low due to the lack of targeted audience.
r00fus 6y ago
You think micropayments will somehow get rid of ads? There are a multitude of noteworthy examples where you pay for a product and still get ads (Cable, Hulu, unskippable DVD sections, etc). What will really curb the online ad industry is the ability for consumers to control their privacy, and make personal info a liability.
- stcredzero 6y ago
  You think micropayments will somehow get rid of ads? No. However, it would theoretically give content creators who don't want to serve the interests of advertisers an alternative source of income that allows this. Basically, do what Patreon does, but with even less friction, and far more flexibly.
  - sofixa 6y ago
    It already exists and it's called Web Monetization. I recently wrote an article on it: https://atodorov.me/2021/03/07/please-support-web-monetization-if-you-want-less-ads-on-the-web/ https://atodorov.me/2021/03/07/please-support-web-monetizati...
spullara 6y ago
You should be able to get a report from publishing platforms on how much people paid for your cookie (per month?) just to better understand how much it would cost to not see ads. I've toyed with the idea of a "no ad" ad network that only bids on their own customers and replaces ads with either nothing or content of your choice. You end up paying a small premium on the amount they had to pay to remove ads. EDIT: Something like this but for consumer viewing rather than for the content publisher: https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/10/21319938/youtube-monetization-metric-ad-revenue-cpm-rpm-alternative-memberships-premium https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/10/21319938/youtube-monetiza...

gamblor956 6y ago

The Fed does not prevent banks from enabling microtransactions. It simply isn't profitable for banks to provide microtransaction services, especially considering that all microtransaction services to date have failed. (Contrast to P2P payment services like Venmo, which have flourished over the same time period.)

tehwebguy 6y ago

This is possible literally now, but barely anyone actually wants it. - Full time content creators just want discoverability and traffic to their content, they have a thousand ways to monetize with ad revenue just being icing for many - Content consumers just want to watch their content, ads aren't annoying enough for most people to pay $11.99 to unlock all of YouTube ad-free (~13 videos / day @ $0.03 / video) None of the current draw to the currently dominant platforms would be moved an inch by some other platform existing with microtransactions.

grumple 6y ago
> - Content consumers just want to watch their content, ads aren't annoying enough for most people to pay $11.99 to unlock all of YouTube ad-free (~13 videos / day @ $0.03 / video) Bigger problem for youtube, imo, is that ad-block works on desktop, and also they don't have any content most of us couldn't live without.
- tyrust 6y ago
  Those problems might not be as big as you think. >More than 70% of YouTube watch time comes from mobile devices. >Over 2 billion logged-in users visit YouTube each month, and every day people watch over a billion hours of video and generate billions of views. from https://www.youtube.com/intl/en-GB/about/press/ https://www.youtube.com/intl/en-GB/about/press/
  - silicon2401 6y ago
    obligatory plug for firefox for android, which allows adblock on mobile. it's not as slick as the youtube app, but it's handy if you don't want to deal with the ads

lifty 6y ago

I recently started playing with the Breez wallet (https://breez.technology https://breez.technology) and they introduced a podcast player directly in the app, and small payments are sent to the author every few seconds, while you listen to the podcast episode. It's pretty nifty and I like it. If there would be widespread support in browsers for this kind of technology, I could see it get to mainstream adoption.

hossbeast 6y ago
Interesting, why is this app under /apps/testing/com.breez.client ? I also note that, searching for "breez" on the google play store yields no results. Is the app not really launched yet?
- lifty 6y ago
  You’re right, I installed it using TestFlight on my iPhone. I guess they don’t have a proper release yet.

reedjosh 6y ago

I really don't want a centralized organization to have visibility of all transactions along with the power to cut them off.

arcticbull 6y ago

Micropayments are a bad idea that feels like a good idea. They're bad for a fundamental human reason - each decision carries with it emotional and psychological burden. Make a few in a day and you land in decision fatigue [1]. Weighing the value of a purchase no matter how small over and over again makes the whole experience an utter chore. There is a paradox in that "people who lack choices seem to want them and often will fight for them", yet at the same time, "people find that making many choices can be [psychologically] aversive." [1] There's no technical reason why any wallet operator today, like PayPal can't do micropayments except people don't want them. They think they do, but they don't. Concrete example: For most people, it's always been cheaper to just buy the content you want to watch from iTunes one at a time - and own it forever! But everyone uses Netflix instead. They continue to use Netflix even as it has less and less of what they actually wanted to watch in the first place! In the battle of more expensive vs more decision making, more expensive always wins. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_fatigue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_fatigue

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
com2kid 6y ago
> Concrete example: It's always been cheaper to just buy the content you want to watch from iTunes, but everyone uses Netflix instead. They continue to use Netflix even as it has less and less of what they actually wanted to watch in the first place! In the battle of more expensive vs more decision making, more expensive always wins. No way is that true. A single season of a TV show varies from $10 to $20 on iTunes[1]. Movies are $10-$15 [2]. For anything beyond light viewing, Netflix is a clear win. Watch 2 movies a month on it and you are well over break even! Now if you buy from iTunes, it is only pay once. But for people like me who almost never rewatch a movie, ownership is irrelevant. Streaming is a hands down winner! [1] https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/robot-chicken-season-1/id203874701 https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/robot-chicken-season-1... https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/archer-danger-island-season-9/id1363208365 https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/archer-danger-island-s... https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/the-office-season-3/id192599752 https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/the-office-season-3/id... [2] https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/back-to-the-future-part-ii/id380040080 https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/back-to-the-future-part-ii... https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/the-divergent-series-allegiant/id1090135578 https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/the-divergent-series-alleg...

TheBlight 6y ago

Never mind the question of why you think the Fed would be well-suited to provide micro-transactions, they've been possible via centralized systems for years. The issue seems to be there is no market for them. See this PDF for a theory: https://nakamotoinstitute.org/static/docs/micropayments-and-mental-transaction-costs.pdf https://nakamotoinstitute.org/static/docs/micropayments-and-...

arcticbull 6y ago
Finally, something Nick and I actually agree on lol. That's a great write-up, too - thanks for sharing.

lm28469 6y ago

> instead of handing over their data. If every article and every video you watch has to be paid for they'll have as much if not more data about you...

ipaddr 6y ago
This is it. Any payment will connect a person more directly than the random targeting we get now connecting using sites visited, words you share with siri and what you put in your facebook profile.

8ytecoder 6y ago

Amazon attempted to do this with Amazon Flexible Payments Service [1]. It didn't get much adoption. [1] https://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2007/08/the_amazon_flexible_payment_se.html https://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2007/08/the_amazon_flex...

hahahahe 6y ago

I don’t know why Visa/MC even exist in 2021. Literal financial leeches.

_peeley 6y ago

I think this is a little too optimistic regarding what consumers are willing to pay for. The Original Sin of the Internet was subsidizing everything via advertising revenue, allowing businesses to present services as "free" to end users (in reality, you're paying with your personal privacy). This culture has taken root very deep inside mainstream culture to the point that the average person would think it ridiculous to pay money for something they've been able to do for "free" for decades now.

antb123 6y ago

Lightning... Otherwise Stellar XLM, Bitcoin LN