4 ms·

Fundamentally it's just difficult to maintain the modern internet without advertising. You have content creators busting their backs with millions of hours of v

Fundamentally it's just difficult to maintain the modern internet without advertising. You have content creators busting their backs with millions of hours of video and content for free, and hosted for free. Obviously there needs to be a way for all of that to be paid for. Whether due to income equality, laziness, greed or something else, the vast majority of people aren't going to engage in micro transactions.

hakfoo 5y ago
The answer isn't microtransactions. Even if you solve the payment problem, Microtransactions involves huge amounts of new friction and creating an entirely new selling process and method. I think the answer is in federation and mutually owned infrastructure. People are comfortable paying Netflix/Hulu/Crunchyroll $10-15 per month. They don't have to worry about "do I want to watch this episode enough to spend 45 cents for it?" or "do I need to make and manage a whole new account just to watch a different show?" The fact the money eventually gets divvied up to content creators is handwaved away behind the scenes. Federation gives other creators the opportunity to sell a similar one-stop-shopping experience you that. I could imagine, say, a subscription where I'd get through the paywall not just on my local newspaper, but the dozens of other papers that might print one or two articles a month that I care about. Or a Patreon-style service where you unlocked everyone for a flat fee, and they use analytics to determine how much of the fee goes to each creator each month. The problem is that most of the content is living on third-party platforms. An OnlyFans or YouTube, for example, could offer a subscription around that model, but they'd just vaccuum up most of the revenue generated for themselves. The creators have to own the platform themselves to prevent that sort of diversion.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  How is federation the solution? Federation isn’t free to setup or manage and so now you’re back to square one. It’s funny that you use Netflix as an example because that’s what they originally tried to do and it didn’t work.
  - hakfoo 5y ago
    It solves the "how do we make non-ad-supported content palatable for consumers." Federation ensures that there's a big enough pool of content that you won't say "I don't know if this is worth $20 per month" or "I'll subscribe for one month and binge-consume everything, then cancel." Yes, it involves customized billing and account infrastructure, but if you set things up properly, the cost of the infrastructure should be less than the revenue it provides. If the federated content creators, in turn, fund a "captive" development and maintenance team to supply things at cost, it may well be cheaper than leasing off-the-shelf solutions.
    - endisneigh 5y ago
      My point is that only large content producers would even entertain such a thing to begin with, and among those the largest will just spin-off and do their own thing. If you're a YouTuber why would you even deal with any of that vs. just continuing to upload on YouTube?
- j-bos 5y ago
  This sounds like what Nebula is attempting to do. A streaming service owned and run by the content creators. https://nebula.app/ https://nebula.app/ No affiliation
johncena33 5y ago
Interesting how when MS is on ad market justifications like this pop up all the time on HN. Meanwhile, quarter of HN is nothing but a jihad against Google for its advertising business.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  It’s almost as if hn is made of of different people
  - johncena33 5y ago
    Yes, there are two groups: pro-MS and anti-Google. And maybe there is a large overlap between these groups. Not some privacy warriors as many of these anti-Google jihadists claim or pretend to be.
bee_rider 5y ago
So you're telling me we can get rid of the youtube influencer culture at the same time as we get rid of creepy ad tech? Nice!

hakfoo 5y ago

The answer isn't microtransactions. Even if you solve the payment problem, Microtransactions involves huge amounts of new friction and creating an entirely new selling process and method. I think the answer is in federation and mutually owned infrastructure. People are comfortable paying Netflix/Hulu/Crunchyroll $10-15 per month. They don't have to worry about "do I want to watch this episode enough to spend 45 cents for it?" or "do I need to make and manage a whole new account just to watch a different show?" The fact the money eventually gets divvied up to content creators is handwaved away behind the scenes. Federation gives other creators the opportunity to sell a similar one-stop-shopping experience you that. I could imagine, say, a subscription where I'd get through the paywall not just on my local newspaper, but the dozens of other papers that might print one or two articles a month that I care about. Or a Patreon-style service where you unlocked everyone for a flat fee, and they use analytics to determine how much of the fee goes to each creator each month. The problem is that most of the content is living on third-party platforms. An OnlyFans or YouTube, for example, could offer a subscription around that model, but they'd just vaccuum up most of the revenue generated for themselves. The creators have to own the platform themselves to prevent that sort of diversion.

endisneigh 5y ago
How is federation the solution? Federation isn’t free to setup or manage and so now you’re back to square one. It’s funny that you use Netflix as an example because that’s what they originally tried to do and it didn’t work.
- hakfoo 5y ago
  It solves the "how do we make non-ad-supported content palatable for consumers." Federation ensures that there's a big enough pool of content that you won't say "I don't know if this is worth $20 per month" or "I'll subscribe for one month and binge-consume everything, then cancel." Yes, it involves customized billing and account infrastructure, but if you set things up properly, the cost of the infrastructure should be less than the revenue it provides. If the federated content creators, in turn, fund a "captive" development and maintenance team to supply things at cost, it may well be cheaper than leasing off-the-shelf solutions.
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    My point is that only large content producers would even entertain such a thing to begin with, and among those the largest will just spin-off and do their own thing. If you're a YouTuber why would you even deal with any of that vs. just continuing to upload on YouTube?
j-bos 5y ago
This sounds like what Nebula is attempting to do. A streaming service owned and run by the content creators. https://nebula.app/ https://nebula.app/ No affiliation

johncena33 5y ago

Interesting how when MS is on ad market justifications like this pop up all the time on HN. Meanwhile, quarter of HN is nothing but a jihad against Google for its advertising business.

endisneigh 5y ago
It’s almost as if hn is made of of different people
- johncena33 5y ago
  Yes, there are two groups: pro-MS and anti-Google. And maybe there is a large overlap between these groups. Not some privacy warriors as many of these anti-Google jihadists claim or pretend to be.

bee_rider 5y ago

So you're telling me we can get rid of the youtube influencer culture at the same time as we get rid of creepy ad tech? Nice!