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It amazes me that over the last 10-20 years an astonishing amount of money and intellectual capital have been invested in adtech and crypto but nothing in micro

It amazes me that over the last 10-20 years an astonishing amount of money and intellectual capital have been invested in adtech and crypto but nothing in micropayments. Ads are evil, but it will remain a moot point until we have working micropayments. We have (and will have) ads with all their downsides exactly because we don't have micropayments, because ads basically work as a substitute to micropayments.

dijit 5y ago
I'd be interested in working on stuff like this; I used to work in a PCI-DSS Tier 1 company storing cardholder data on-premises so if someone wants to work on this and would like my help with this please reach out; my contact information is in my bio.
qualudeheart 5y ago
I’m still surprised more apps don’t have inbuilt marketplaces and then take a cut of payments. Reddit could do this. Users sell to each other through an Etsy like interface. Reddit takes 5% of each transaction. This solves Reddits existing inability to monetize through ads as successfully as their major competitors.
- sodality2 5y ago
  What would be sold on a Reddit market?
  - travoc 5y ago
    Moderator privileges and astroturfing opportunities.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    Like craigslist 2.0? They could capitalize on the fact that there are existing sub-communities around various niches.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - wiether 5y ago
    Karma and insults ?
  - qualudeheart 5y ago
    Special goods catered to specific subreddits. On /r/fishing you obviously sell fishing supplies. On /r/$political_faction you sell bumper stickers with slogans. /r/nonbinary you sell pronoun pins. It would be like an etsy or a shopify store for each subreddit with a UI that reflects that. It could also be a big Amazon style UI for a sitewide shop.
ignoramous 5y ago
Cryptocurrencies, ironically, enable micropayments. Orchid.com did an extensive write-up on how they achieve this (https://www.orchid.com/assets/whitepaper/whitepaper.pdf https://www.orchid.com/assets/whitepaper/whitepaper.pdf Chapter 5, Nanopayments) The Brave Attention Token is another example. Although, I am not convinced micropayments would save the Internet from this ad-winter: It is hard to beat free at scale.
- emptyfile 5y ago
  "Enable micropayments". Where are they disabled? And in what world is it easier to do a micro payment with cryptocurrency instead of one of your cards?
- lodovic 5y ago
  Not if the transaction cost is $10
- thehappypm 5y ago
  There's a little bit of a fundamental problem here. We're talking about paying a cent to avoid an ad. On a blockchain, work needs to be done to register that transaction. If the fee is a fraction of a penny, who is going to want to do the work? I get that you'll make it up at scale, but each transaction must be cryptographically secure (and therefore take up some type of resource), so there's a problem.
  - ignoramous 5y ago
    For "crypto" transactions, on-chain is no longer seen as a stringent requirement. In fact, the entire DeFi ecosystem wouldn't exist if there wasn't a cryptographically-secure way of doing transactions off-chain on second-level chains (0x, Polygon, Compound etc) or on chain of chains (Polkadot, Cosmos, Kava etc), or on chains built for payments (Celo, Diem, Stellar etc). Beside, Orchid.com whitepaper talks about doing nanopayments on-chain, which is quite a radical approach.
    - thehappypm 5y ago
sofixa 5y ago
> but nothing in micropayments That's not true. Web Monetization is built on top of the Interledger and does precisely that - micropayments for web content. When i wrote about it[0] and posted on HN[1] the overwhelming response here was negative, presupposing greed and lack of privacy of everyone ( as in the website would still track and run ads to earn more money, etc.). The solutions exist, people just don't want them, even supposedly privacy-focused people. [0] 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... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26375857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26375857
- jsymolon 5y ago
  > overwhelming response here was negative, presupposing greed and lack of privacy of everyone Because the history of other platforms which have done this, shows that ads didn't go away. Cable TV, full of ads. Satellite Radio, not too bad but still has ads.
  - cookie_monsta 5y ago
    But then again Netflix et al, zero ads Spotify premium, zero ads I think it's just a question of coming up with the right model. Assuming that failed examples are the rule isn't all that useful
    - kasabali 5y ago
      Some Netflix originals have a lot of product placement
      - wintermutestwin 5y ago
        Product placement is a slight annoyance compared to ads. That said, I could see them becoming just as toxic.
        5y ago
libertine 5y ago
The reality is that you can't have it all. You live with the assumption that everyone would just accept micropayments, and that's far from the truth. The result would be content for a small portion of those with available income, and content for those without it (with parallel markets for content distribution under paywalls - like piracy). That's even more messed up than the current advertising model. Don't get me wrong, some brands would love that, to pile up those with available income and serve them marketing communication through press releases, reviews and stuff like that. I can see Apple applauding this.
NiloCK 5y ago
Here's one cryptocurrency PoC on micropayments: https://web3torrent.statechannels.org/ https://web3torrent.statechannels.org/ More directly to your point, I think lots of people have made attempts at micropayment protocols. The difficulty is psychological rather than technical - the cumulative mental burden of repeatedly deciding whether to part with a tenth of a cent "costs" much more than value being exchanged.
nonameiguess 5y ago
I feel like most on the producer side are coming at this from a totally wrong angle. A better web isn't a web in which content is monetized in a different way. Consumers don't want to pay because most content on the web is not worth paying for. Not with ads, not with micropayments, not with anything. There's the saying about five web sites consisting of screenshots of the other four, but even with news, the vast bulk of it that isn't legitimately old media like Al Jazeera or Reuters is 22 year-olds being paid with exposure to summarize Reddit threads. Much of it isn't even that at this point and is probably just programmatically generated with no writer at all. When all you have to go on is a link, you can't possibly know whether something is worth paying for until after clicking, reading it, and finding out. But if the first thing you see is some pop up begging you to subscribe to content you've not even read yet, turn off an ad blocker to a server you don't trust, or even some gate requiring a micropayment, a whole lot of people are just going to go elsewhere for what is likely to be identical information content at a less annoying source. If content producers are willing to put in the hard work of developing a reputation for quality output slowly, disseminated through trusted sources, surely augmented by some form of paid marketing but not by just spamming the web with links in the hopes that they can get clicks and then use dark patterns to keep people on the site long enough to monetize 20 seconds of their eyeball time, then maybe they can get people to willingly pay them. This is sort of what Substack is proving. The tiny number of writers worth reading are actually being paid by willing readers. But it's a tiny number. Micropayments can never solve that most web content is worth 0 dollars and 0 cents.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  > If content producers are willing to put in the hard work of developing a reputation for quality output slowly, disseminated through trusted sources, surely augmented by some form of paid marketing but not by just spamming the web with links in the hopes that they can get clicks and then use dark patterns to keep people on the site long enough to monetize 20 seconds of their eyeball time, then maybe they can get people to willingly pay them. What do you think traditional print media organizations were trying to do for decades before they gave up and embraced the new normal with layoffs and consolidation? Substack is an extremely, small, extremely premium part of what used to be the whole. > Consumers don't want to pay because most content on the web is not worth paying for. Maybe much content on the web is not worth paying for, but the vast majority consumers don't want to pay regardless of the quality, not because of it. It has literally been impossible for most news organizations to survive because people would rather read the advertising-funded "22 year-old" than a quality outlet where they have to pay any amount of money.
bbarn 5y ago
Micropayment are a non-starter, and even if they weren't, you'd still have ads. There are companies lined up willing to pay money to show you something they want to sell you, and even if your favorite news site was micropayment enabled, even the most righteous media companies would be fools not to keep taking that money to expand their ability to give you more and better news, as an example. But to my first point, they are a non-starter because too much of the world has trouble managing their money, and mentally don't want to pay for something until they've seen it. Why should I pay a dollar to read an article that might be poorly written, full of inaccuracies, etc.? The closest model I've seen to working is twitch. You have a central content platform, with silly cosmetic awards for subscription, and a sense of "credibility" among others there in interactions because you've been subscribing for x amount of time. This would require a more interactive news service, and hell, that I would pay for. If I read an article by an expert who answered (reasonable) follow up questions and owned their journalism, that would be incredible.

dijit 5y ago

I'd be interested in working on stuff like this; I used to work in a PCI-DSS Tier 1 company storing cardholder data on-premises so if someone wants to work on this and would like my help with this please reach out; my contact information is in my bio.

qualudeheart 5y ago

I’m still surprised more apps don’t have inbuilt marketplaces and then take a cut of payments. Reddit could do this. Users sell to each other through an Etsy like interface. Reddit takes 5% of each transaction. This solves Reddits existing inability to monetize through ads as successfully as their major competitors.

sodality2 5y ago
What would be sold on a Reddit market?
- travoc 5y ago
  Moderator privileges and astroturfing opportunities.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  Like craigslist 2.0? They could capitalize on the fact that there are existing sub-communities around various niches.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- wiether 5y ago
  Karma and insults ?
- qualudeheart 5y ago
  Special goods catered to specific subreddits. On /r/fishing you obviously sell fishing supplies. On /r/$political_faction you sell bumper stickers with slogans. /r/nonbinary you sell pronoun pins. It would be like an etsy or a shopify store for each subreddit with a UI that reflects that. It could also be a big Amazon style UI for a sitewide shop.

ignoramous 5y ago

Cryptocurrencies, ironically, enable micropayments. Orchid.com did an extensive write-up on how they achieve this (https://www.orchid.com/assets/whitepaper/whitepaper.pdf https://www.orchid.com/assets/whitepaper/whitepaper.pdf Chapter 5, Nanopayments) The Brave Attention Token is another example. Although, I am not convinced micropayments would save the Internet from this ad-winter: It is hard to beat free at scale.

emptyfile 5y ago
"Enable micropayments". Where are they disabled? And in what world is it easier to do a micro payment with cryptocurrency instead of one of your cards?
lodovic 5y ago
Not if the transaction cost is $10
thehappypm 5y ago
There's a little bit of a fundamental problem here. We're talking about paying a cent to avoid an ad. On a blockchain, work needs to be done to register that transaction. If the fee is a fraction of a penny, who is going to want to do the work? I get that you'll make it up at scale, but each transaction must be cryptographically secure (and therefore take up some type of resource), so there's a problem.
- ignoramous 5y ago
  For "crypto" transactions, on-chain is no longer seen as a stringent requirement. In fact, the entire DeFi ecosystem wouldn't exist if there wasn't a cryptographically-secure way of doing transactions off-chain on second-level chains (0x, Polygon, Compound etc) or on chain of chains (Polkadot, Cosmos, Kava etc), or on chains built for payments (Celo, Diem, Stellar etc). Beside, Orchid.com whitepaper talks about doing nanopayments on-chain, which is quite a radical approach.
  - thehappypm 5y ago

sofixa 5y ago

> but nothing in micropayments That's not true. Web Monetization is built on top of the Interledger and does precisely that - micropayments for web content. When i wrote about it[0] and posted on HN[1] the overwhelming response here was negative, presupposing greed and lack of privacy of everyone ( as in the website would still track and run ads to earn more money, etc.). The solutions exist, people just don't want them, even supposedly privacy-focused people. [0] 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... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26375857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26375857

jsymolon 5y ago
> overwhelming response here was negative, presupposing greed and lack of privacy of everyone Because the history of other platforms which have done this, shows that ads didn't go away. Cable TV, full of ads. Satellite Radio, not too bad but still has ads.
- cookie_monsta 5y ago
  But then again Netflix et al, zero ads Spotify premium, zero ads I think it's just a question of coming up with the right model. Assuming that failed examples are the rule isn't all that useful
  - kasabali 5y ago
    Some Netflix originals have a lot of product placement
    - wintermutestwin 5y ago
      Product placement is a slight annoyance compared to ads. That said, I could see them becoming just as toxic.
      - 5y ago

libertine 5y ago

The reality is that you can't have it all. You live with the assumption that everyone would just accept micropayments, and that's far from the truth. The result would be content for a small portion of those with available income, and content for those without it (with parallel markets for content distribution under paywalls - like piracy). That's even more messed up than the current advertising model. Don't get me wrong, some brands would love that, to pile up those with available income and serve them marketing communication through press releases, reviews and stuff like that. I can see Apple applauding this.

NiloCK 5y ago

Here's one cryptocurrency PoC on micropayments: https://web3torrent.statechannels.org/ https://web3torrent.statechannels.org/ More directly to your point, I think lots of people have made attempts at micropayment protocols. The difficulty is psychological rather than technical - the cumulative mental burden of repeatedly deciding whether to part with a tenth of a cent "costs" much more than value being exchanged.

nonameiguess 5y ago

I feel like most on the producer side are coming at this from a totally wrong angle. A better web isn't a web in which content is monetized in a different way. Consumers don't want to pay because most content on the web is not worth paying for. Not with ads, not with micropayments, not with anything. There's the saying about five web sites consisting of screenshots of the other four, but even with news, the vast bulk of it that isn't legitimately old media like Al Jazeera or Reuters is 22 year-olds being paid with exposure to summarize Reddit threads. Much of it isn't even that at this point and is probably just programmatically generated with no writer at all. When all you have to go on is a link, you can't possibly know whether something is worth paying for until after clicking, reading it, and finding out. But if the first thing you see is some pop up begging you to subscribe to content you've not even read yet, turn off an ad blocker to a server you don't trust, or even some gate requiring a micropayment, a whole lot of people are just going to go elsewhere for what is likely to be identical information content at a less annoying source. If content producers are willing to put in the hard work of developing a reputation for quality output slowly, disseminated through trusted sources, surely augmented by some form of paid marketing but not by just spamming the web with links in the hopes that they can get clicks and then use dark patterns to keep people on the site long enough to monetize 20 seconds of their eyeball time, then maybe they can get people to willingly pay them. This is sort of what Substack is proving. The tiny number of writers worth reading are actually being paid by willing readers. But it's a tiny number. Micropayments can never solve that most web content is worth 0 dollars and 0 cents.

whimsicalism 5y ago
> If content producers are willing to put in the hard work of developing a reputation for quality output slowly, disseminated through trusted sources, surely augmented by some form of paid marketing but not by just spamming the web with links in the hopes that they can get clicks and then use dark patterns to keep people on the site long enough to monetize 20 seconds of their eyeball time, then maybe they can get people to willingly pay them. What do you think traditional print media organizations were trying to do for decades before they gave up and embraced the new normal with layoffs and consolidation? Substack is an extremely, small, extremely premium part of what used to be the whole. > Consumers don't want to pay because most content on the web is not worth paying for. Maybe much content on the web is not worth paying for, but the vast majority consumers don't want to pay regardless of the quality, not because of it. It has literally been impossible for most news organizations to survive because people would rather read the advertising-funded "22 year-old" than a quality outlet where they have to pay any amount of money.

bbarn 5y ago

Micropayment are a non-starter, and even if they weren't, you'd still have ads. There are companies lined up willing to pay money to show you something they want to sell you, and even if your favorite news site was micropayment enabled, even the most righteous media companies would be fools not to keep taking that money to expand their ability to give you more and better news, as an example. But to my first point, they are a non-starter because too much of the world has trouble managing their money, and mentally don't want to pay for something until they've seen it. Why should I pay a dollar to read an article that might be poorly written, full of inaccuracies, etc.? The closest model I've seen to working is twitch. You have a central content platform, with silly cosmetic awards for subscription, and a sense of "credibility" among others there in interactions because you've been subscribing for x amount of time. This would require a more interactive news service, and hell, that I would pay for. If I read an article by an expert who answered (reasonable) follow up questions and owned their journalism, that would be incredible.