3 ms·

The outcry would be huge if everything went to a pay model.

by ipaddr 6y ago

mdavis6890 6y ago
You're right - but I find that strange. Most of us are not angry about the pay model for groceries or haircuts. A smaller - but still large - fraction of us are okay paying for other zero-marginal-cost goods like software as well. I wonder why we are so attached to free content online. Maybe because of the historical television model that's been mentally transferred to the internet?
- dahfizz 6y ago
  Its just the fact that people are used to free content, so the idea of paying for it is foreign. If groceries used to be free, but suddenly cost money, people would riot.
  - pydry 6y ago
    That's absurd. People need groceries. If the National Enquirer went to a paid subscription model or disappeared entirely nobody would riot.
    - inetknght 6y ago
      > That's absurd. People need groceries. Thus: if groceries used to be free, but suddenly cost money, people would riot. Arguably: why would people riot about not-free Youtube?
  - yissp 6y ago
    See also this Planet Money episode about formerly-free doughnuts. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/13/156737801/the-cost-of-free-doughnuts-70-years-of-regret https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/13/156737801/the-...
- ZephyrBlu 6y ago
  I think it's just because we've been conditioned to expect free content online. Free services like YouTube have provided me with an immense amount of value, but I would still be hesitant to pay for them unless I absolutely had to.
raspyberr 6y ago
I foresee micropayments being extremely common place in the future. Something like a digital wallet browser extension. And instead of paying 5p to watch a video, you will instead pay 5p to skip 3 minute ads.
- wayoutthere 6y ago
  People have been saying this for decades. I don’t see a way for this to happen that is both more convenient to users and not open to all manner of automated attacks that would be difficult if not impossible to track down. Ad fraud is already a huge problem, as are things like ransomware. Micropayments would just give bad actors a direct line to your wallet.
  - pseudozach 6y ago
    You can allow certain domains to automatically withdraw from your bitcoin wallet and set limits to how much they can withdraw. This is not a technical problem but more of a marketing/adoption one. There are very smart people working on these: https://socket.money/ https://socket.money/
    - wayoutthere 6y ago
      And what happens when one of those domains gets hacked and a malicious script injected into their code that takes advantage of a 0-day in the browser to siphon the cash? Not at all a far-fetched situation as it’s how ransomware works today.
- lwhi 6y ago
  I'd be happiest with a daily subscription model.
- intrasight 6y ago
  The articles said that the industry has been talking about micropayments for 25 years and says it's hard. I think the real issue is that no large-ish tech organization has any incentive to invest in micropayments.
pydry 6y ago
The content people really value is already being paid for. I didn't hear any outrage at all when several newspapers transitioned to a pay model and threw up a paywall. The parties most upset were the newspapers themselves.
pessimizer 6y ago
Most of that outcry would be from terrible media outlets who would have to shut down. 95% of the things I click on I wish I hadn't. They would still get an impression (if I weren't adblocked to the teeth.) They're trash that keeps me from the information that I want, and matchmaking stalkery ad markets are the reason for them.
xtracto 6y ago
I already hate it with Music and Video content: With music, I pay Youtube Music, but they don't have all the artists I like. I would have to pay for Spotify, Tidal and Youtube Music to get close to it. This means paying $30 USD per month With video... I pay $70 USD for my cable company (HBO+Star+misc-crap) plus $13 USD for Netflix, plus $12 for disney plus (wife likes a couple shows there), plus $13 Amazon Prime, plus $10 for the local Netflix-like crap in my country (for some local shows). That means $118 USD for video only, which is 14% of the average income in my country ($843 USD). Imagine if I had to pay $10 dollars a month for each of the internet services we use? $10 Gmail $10 google $10 Reddit $10 HackerNews $10 Youtube $10 Linkedin $10 Facebook $10 twitter $10 Whatsapp $10 LiChess $10 Slack $10 Samsung Health $10 Google Maps $10 Podcast Republic $10 CBS News (The only US channel I like for news) $10 Home Workout $10 Discord And that's at the top of my head, it will be $180 USD, or 21% of the average income of someone in my country. If that happened, the internet will become "a place for the rich" and pretty much only the north emisphere will use it. Yeah, ads suck... but their are a necessary evil to "monetize" users that are just not monetizable any other way.
- YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
  >> plus $12 for disney plus (wife likes a couple shows there) Sh, it's OK, everyone does it, you are not alone :P
- amoorthy 6y ago
  Your point is a good one but let me offer some tweaks that make paying for stuff not look as bleak. 1. Bundling multiple subscriptions is a long-time practice and if more services were paid offerings we'd likely all buy some bundle that gave us most of what we wanted at a reasonable price. 2. Paying for services will reduce the number of services around... which may be a good thing when so many offerings are sub-par. 3. With more paid offerings, we will be more deliberate about how we spend our time, which is what advertising-based models make us forget we are really spending. And as you age you realize that the time you spent watching ad-supported drivel was more expensive than if you had just paid directly for the things you really needed and spent the rest of your time on things that matter - friends, family, experiences, learning etc.
YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
Was the web supported by ads before Google? I don't remember. Does the web have to be supported by ads? If the web was a non-profit service, supported by public funds, managed by academic institutions for example, would we miss 90% of the content that's basically sponsored by someone who wants to sell something? From my point of view it looks like the web is a giant advertising machine built on top of something that could be ... not a giant advertising machine. Still from my POV, it just happens that the big players on the web are suppoting ads because that's where their revenue comes from and if they weren't the big players, then we wouldn't have a web of ads. So basically we're not paying for ads that we wouldn't be paying for if google didn't run the web.
- toiletfuneral 6y ago
  I like this point a lot, I do vaguely remember an internet before Google. The distinction was the internet felt built by people who had things to contribute, I think now the internet is a place to extract any and all value possible. We're too deep inside massive monolithic profit generation systems to see an alternative where the value isn't ultimately monetary. The lack of a true commons etc. * I think AOL making its own internet inside itself was an interesting data point on early-ish internet
- overgard 6y ago
  I'm probably too nostalgic, but that's what the web used to be... and it was so much better. Most of the content we would lose I wouldn't miss at all. Clickbait and buzzfeed style sites. Already I'm paying for a lot of sites that actually do reporting, for instance, so I already feel like the content of real value is already for-pay or produced completely for free by enthusiasts and academics. I remember ~2001 or so a lot of the sites I visited were ad supported, but it mostly just made enough to cover hosting costs. At this point hosting costs are so cheap that I don't even think those style of sites would have trouble existing. Most of those sites existed because some people were interested in a hobby or a subject, and would publish news and have bulletin boards and articles and stuff. Sadly those kind of communities don't seem to exist anymore, now those kind of things end up being subreddits or facebook groups and I never feel like those are quite the same, they just don't have the same curation or community feel.
lwhi 6y ago
It wouldn't happen at once. I wonder whether the gradual switch would need to be made possible through something similar to a micropayment subscription model, which is non publisher specific. I don't want to commit to subscriptions for 5+ publications, but I'd happily buy a days access occasionally. This feels much more akin to buying a newspaper in the old world. I think we'd end up seeing positive changes. Especially the end of content producers being held to ransom by advertisers and commercial pressures.

The outcry would be huge if everything went to a pay model.

by ipaddr 6y ago

The outcry would be huge if everything went to a pay model.

You're right - but I find that strange. Most of us are not angry about the pay model for groceries or haircuts. A smaller - but still large - fraction of us are okay paying for other zero-marginal-cost goods like software as well. I wonder why we are so attached to free content online. Maybe because of the historical television model that's been mentally transferred to the internet?

dahfizz 6y ago
Its just the fact that people are used to free content, so the idea of paying for it is foreign. If groceries used to be free, but suddenly cost money, people would riot.
- pydry 6y ago
  That's absurd. People need groceries. If the National Enquirer went to a paid subscription model or disappeared entirely nobody would riot.
  - inetknght 6y ago
    > That's absurd. People need groceries. Thus: if groceries used to be free, but suddenly cost money, people would riot. Arguably: why would people riot about not-free Youtube?
- yissp 6y ago
  See also this Planet Money episode about formerly-free doughnuts. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/13/156737801/the-cost-of-free-doughnuts-70-years-of-regret https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/13/156737801/the-...
ZephyrBlu 6y ago
I think it's just because we've been conditioned to expect free content online. Free services like YouTube have provided me with an immense amount of value, but I would still be hesitant to pay for them unless I absolutely had to.

raspyberr 6y ago

I foresee micropayments being extremely common place in the future. Something like a digital wallet browser extension. And instead of paying 5p to watch a video, you will instead pay 5p to skip 3 minute ads.

wayoutthere 6y ago
People have been saying this for decades. I don’t see a way for this to happen that is both more convenient to users and not open to all manner of automated attacks that would be difficult if not impossible to track down. Ad fraud is already a huge problem, as are things like ransomware. Micropayments would just give bad actors a direct line to your wallet.
- pseudozach 6y ago
  You can allow certain domains to automatically withdraw from your bitcoin wallet and set limits to how much they can withdraw. This is not a technical problem but more of a marketing/adoption one. There are very smart people working on these: https://socket.money/ https://socket.money/
  - wayoutthere 6y ago
    And what happens when one of those domains gets hacked and a malicious script injected into their code that takes advantage of a 0-day in the browser to siphon the cash? Not at all a far-fetched situation as it’s how ransomware works today.
lwhi 6y ago
I'd be happiest with a daily subscription model.
intrasight 6y ago
The articles said that the industry has been talking about micropayments for 25 years and says it's hard. I think the real issue is that no large-ish tech organization has any incentive to invest in micropayments.

pydry 6y ago

The content people really value is already being paid for. I didn't hear any outrage at all when several newspapers transitioned to a pay model and threw up a paywall. The parties most upset were the newspapers themselves.

pessimizer 6y ago

Most of that outcry would be from terrible media outlets who would have to shut down. 95% of the things I click on I wish I hadn't. They would still get an impression (if I weren't adblocked to the teeth.) They're trash that keeps me from the information that I want, and matchmaking stalkery ad markets are the reason for them.

xtracto 6y ago

I already hate it with Music and Video content: With music, I pay Youtube Music, but they don't have all the artists I like. I would have to pay for Spotify, Tidal and Youtube Music to get close to it. This means paying $30 USD per month With video... I pay $70 USD for my cable company (HBO+Star+misc-crap) plus $13 USD for Netflix, plus $12 for disney plus (wife likes a couple shows there), plus $13 Amazon Prime, plus $10 for the local Netflix-like crap in my country (for some local shows). That means $118 USD for video only, which is 14% of the average income in my country ($843 USD). Imagine if I had to pay $10 dollars a month for each of the internet services we use? $10 Gmail $10 google $10 Reddit $10 HackerNews $10 Youtube $10 Linkedin $10 Facebook $10 twitter $10 Whatsapp $10 LiChess $10 Slack $10 Samsung Health $10 Google Maps $10 Podcast Republic $10 CBS News (The only US channel I like for news) $10 Home Workout $10 Discord And that's at the top of my head, it will be $180 USD, or 21% of the average income of someone in my country. If that happened, the internet will become "a place for the rich" and pretty much only the north emisphere will use it. Yeah, ads suck... but their are a necessary evil to "monetize" users that are just not monetizable any other way.

YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
>> plus $12 for disney plus (wife likes a couple shows there) Sh, it's OK, everyone does it, you are not alone :P
amoorthy 6y ago
Your point is a good one but let me offer some tweaks that make paying for stuff not look as bleak. 1. Bundling multiple subscriptions is a long-time practice and if more services were paid offerings we'd likely all buy some bundle that gave us most of what we wanted at a reasonable price. 2. Paying for services will reduce the number of services around... which may be a good thing when so many offerings are sub-par. 3. With more paid offerings, we will be more deliberate about how we spend our time, which is what advertising-based models make us forget we are really spending. And as you age you realize that the time you spent watching ad-supported drivel was more expensive than if you had just paid directly for the things you really needed and spent the rest of your time on things that matter - friends, family, experiences, learning etc.

YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago

Was the web supported by ads before Google? I don't remember. Does the web have to be supported by ads? If the web was a non-profit service, supported by public funds, managed by academic institutions for example, would we miss 90% of the content that's basically sponsored by someone who wants to sell something? From my point of view it looks like the web is a giant advertising machine built on top of something that could be ... not a giant advertising machine. Still from my POV, it just happens that the big players on the web are suppoting ads because that's where their revenue comes from and if they weren't the big players, then we wouldn't have a web of ads. So basically we're not paying for ads that we wouldn't be paying for if google didn't run the web.

toiletfuneral 6y ago
I like this point a lot, I do vaguely remember an internet before Google. The distinction was the internet felt built by people who had things to contribute, I think now the internet is a place to extract any and all value possible. We're too deep inside massive monolithic profit generation systems to see an alternative where the value isn't ultimately monetary. The lack of a true commons etc. * I think AOL making its own internet inside itself was an interesting data point on early-ish internet
overgard 6y ago
I'm probably too nostalgic, but that's what the web used to be... and it was so much better. Most of the content we would lose I wouldn't miss at all. Clickbait and buzzfeed style sites. Already I'm paying for a lot of sites that actually do reporting, for instance, so I already feel like the content of real value is already for-pay or produced completely for free by enthusiasts and academics. I remember ~2001 or so a lot of the sites I visited were ad supported, but it mostly just made enough to cover hosting costs. At this point hosting costs are so cheap that I don't even think those style of sites would have trouble existing. Most of those sites existed because some people were interested in a hobby or a subject, and would publish news and have bulletin boards and articles and stuff. Sadly those kind of communities don't seem to exist anymore, now those kind of things end up being subreddits or facebook groups and I never feel like those are quite the same, they just don't have the same curation or community feel.

lwhi 6y ago

It wouldn't happen at once. I wonder whether the gradual switch would need to be made possible through something similar to a micropayment subscription model, which is non publisher specific. I don't want to commit to subscriptions for 5+ publications, but I'd happily buy a days access occasionally. This feels much more akin to buying a newspaper in the old world. I think we'd end up seeing positive changes. Especially the end of content producers being held to ransom by advertisers and commercial pressures.