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I feel that the solution to the pay for content problem is micropayments. Why do I have to pay subscription to 10 news papers if i only read 2 articles per mon

I feel that the solution to the pay for content problem is micropayments. Why do I have to pay subscription to 10 news papers if i only read 2 articles per month from each? Why can’t I have a button at the bottom that says pay 10 cents to read the whole article where payment happens instantly without redirects and filling credit card info. Why does paypal/stripe have a fixed minimum fee of $0.30 for doing a database update? Here is an example of what I am talking about that is implemented via the lightning network: https://yalls.org/ https://yalls.org/

DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
> Why does paypal/stripe have a fixed minimum fee of $0.30 for doing a database update? That's Visa + Mastercard's network fee. ------ Y'ever noticed how no-one has ever actually disrupted the online payments industry? It's because Visa and Mastercard own the very substrate of e-commerce through their private inter-bank networks. You cannot get anything done without going through them - and their minimum fees.
- gurumeditations 5y ago
  That’s the problem that cryptocurrency originally tried to solve, but of course that comes with its own set of drawbacks and shortcomings. The fundamental problem is that the US Dollar was not designed for digital transactions. When bank networks came into existence, they stopped trading physical bills and just started flipping bits in their privately owned databases. What needs to happen is the Federal Reserve needs to create a digital Dollar system that is secure, is accepted everywhere, and can be transacted quickly with zero fees. Erase the bank networks and turn banks into customer service centers who are given custodial powers (credit, chargebacks, rewards, etc) over your wallet in return for fees. The government could even levy taxes over the entire US economy this way. No more tax dodging and loss of trillions in public funds. No more TurboTax.
FabHK 5y ago
I am not sure. I think the bundling of content might have a positive side effect: I think there is a lot of content that people love to consume (cat videos, food porn, sports, etc.), even if it is not particularly “worthy”, and vice versa content that is important or worthy, and that you might want to have (even if you don’t always want to actually consume it!), such as deep investigative journalism exposing misdeeds of the powerful, operas, what have you. With bundles, like The Economist or any other newspaper, or TV channels, you can support or cross subsidise the latter with the former. With micro payments, not sure that would work. It might lead to more clickbait. It’s a bit like in the experiment where you could preorder your food at the work canteen for the entire week - people would pre-order a nice balanced healthy diet, while when you make the choice every day, you end up with pizza most days. Or how people would buy the Encyclopaedia Britannica for home for a substantial amount, and then rarely if ever use it. However, one thing in favour of micropayments versus ads: they allow you to support an article without having to read it… TLDR: subscriptions and bundles might allow “the better angels of our nature” to support better and more valuable content than micropayments or ad financing.
sofixa 5y ago
Ut already exists in the form of the Web Monetization standard, which uses the Interledger network. Sadly it isn't very popular yet ( even if the Internet Archive, Imgur and Hacker Noon already support it). I wrote an article about it some time back: 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...

DaiPlusPlus 5y ago

> Why does paypal/stripe have a fixed minimum fee of $0.30 for doing a database update? That's Visa + Mastercard's network fee. ------ Y'ever noticed how no-one has ever actually disrupted the online payments industry? It's because Visa and Mastercard own the very substrate of e-commerce through their private inter-bank networks. You cannot get anything done without going through them - and their minimum fees.

gurumeditations 5y ago
That’s the problem that cryptocurrency originally tried to solve, but of course that comes with its own set of drawbacks and shortcomings. The fundamental problem is that the US Dollar was not designed for digital transactions. When bank networks came into existence, they stopped trading physical bills and just started flipping bits in their privately owned databases. What needs to happen is the Federal Reserve needs to create a digital Dollar system that is secure, is accepted everywhere, and can be transacted quickly with zero fees. Erase the bank networks and turn banks into customer service centers who are given custodial powers (credit, chargebacks, rewards, etc) over your wallet in return for fees. The government could even levy taxes over the entire US economy this way. No more tax dodging and loss of trillions in public funds. No more TurboTax.

FabHK 5y ago

I am not sure. I think the bundling of content might have a positive side effect: I think there is a lot of content that people love to consume (cat videos, food porn, sports, etc.), even if it is not particularly “worthy”, and vice versa content that is important or worthy, and that you might want to have (even if you don’t always want to actually consume it!), such as deep investigative journalism exposing misdeeds of the powerful, operas, what have you. With bundles, like The Economist or any other newspaper, or TV channels, you can support or cross subsidise the latter with the former. With micro payments, not sure that would work. It might lead to more clickbait. It’s a bit like in the experiment where you could preorder your food at the work canteen for the entire week - people would pre-order a nice balanced healthy diet, while when you make the choice every day, you end up with pizza most days. Or how people would buy the Encyclopaedia Britannica for home for a substantial amount, and then rarely if ever use it. However, one thing in favour of micropayments versus ads: they allow you to support an article without having to read it… TLDR: subscriptions and bundles might allow “the better angels of our nature” to support better and more valuable content than micropayments or ad financing.

sofixa 5y ago

Ut already exists in the form of the Web Monetization standard, which uses the Interledger network. Sadly it isn't very popular yet ( even if the Internet Archive, Imgur and Hacker Noon already support it). I wrote an article about it some time back: 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...