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I'm not sure content creators need to be paid for their work. At least, not all. What internet surveillance does is motivate people to create awful content th

I'm not sure content creators need to be paid for their work. At least, not all. What internet surveillance does is motivate people to create awful content that nobody in the market would pay for in order to skim dollars from what is largely a privacy invading, fraudulent vacuum of an industry. People will pay for good content, they did for a long time before there was an internet or a surveillance industry. There were books, films, subscription TV services, paid for audio. There were also steady streams of novel manuscripts, demo tapes and screenplays that went straight into the bin because they were rubbish. Now the rubbish hangs around on a webpage surrounded by trackers, luring people in with clickbait titles and lies, and multiplying beyond the ability of even google to sort out.

acdha 5y ago
That sounds like an argument for better payment mechanisms but people still need to be paid. Yes, people paid for content prior to the internet but there were also problems — many good things went unnoticed because not enough discovered them while plenty of garbage got tons of attention because the creator had some personal connection to publishers, reviewers, DJs, etc. One of the things I loved about the rise of the web was that it provided so many opportunities to find things which weren't going to run in my local newspaper, be stocked by the local book or music shops (if you weren't lucky enough to have good indie options), or the pile of mud a lot of the big radio stations were often playing (this got a lot worse in the 90s when Clear Channel started buying all of the radio stations so questions about what got mainstream coverage in many markets came down to what one guy in Texas wanted). I don't want to lose that — whether it's counterpressure to the huge race-to-the-bottom advertising market for more selective sponsorship, something like Apple/Stripe Pay to make it super easy for people to get paid for their work, etc.
- ratherbefuddled 5y ago
  > That sounds like an argument for better payment mechanisms but people still need to be paid. Paying people for good content doesn't fix the problem. The internet is still cluttered with awful content drowning out the useful stuff. Not because people are trying hard and learning or just plain love their awful guitar playing even if nobody is watching, but because they're getting paid by surveillance. What we need is the absence of that incentive. This is one of those cases where the free market would actually fix the problem if there was some sensible regulation applied. Sadly it'll never be quick enough to catch up with the technology.

acdha 5y ago

That sounds like an argument for better payment mechanisms but people still need to be paid. Yes, people paid for content prior to the internet but there were also problems — many good things went unnoticed because not enough discovered them while plenty of garbage got tons of attention because the creator had some personal connection to publishers, reviewers, DJs, etc. One of the things I loved about the rise of the web was that it provided so many opportunities to find things which weren't going to run in my local newspaper, be stocked by the local book or music shops (if you weren't lucky enough to have good indie options), or the pile of mud a lot of the big radio stations were often playing (this got a lot worse in the 90s when Clear Channel started buying all of the radio stations so questions about what got mainstream coverage in many markets came down to what one guy in Texas wanted). I don't want to lose that — whether it's counterpressure to the huge race-to-the-bottom advertising market for more selective sponsorship, something like Apple/Stripe Pay to make it super easy for people to get paid for their work, etc.

ratherbefuddled 5y ago
> That sounds like an argument for better payment mechanisms but people still need to be paid. Paying people for good content doesn't fix the problem. The internet is still cluttered with awful content drowning out the useful stuff. Not because people are trying hard and learning or just plain love their awful guitar playing even if nobody is watching, but because they're getting paid by surveillance. What we need is the absence of that incentive. This is one of those cases where the free market would actually fix the problem if there was some sensible regulation applied. Sadly it'll never be quick enough to catch up with the technology.