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The payment mechanism he talks about that would enable micropayments to individuals rather than corporations, never happened. It technically happened of course

The payment mechanism he talks about that would enable micropayments to individuals rather than corporations, never happened. It technically happened of course in the form of various companies trying to build systems that do this (using e.g. crypto currencies) and put themselves in the middle to try to "own" and control the lucrative revenue streams. But that's the reason it never happens because as soon as you do that, you end up with a fragmented mess of different companies all failing to get a critical mass of actual micropayments happening. So, the money exchanged adds up to not much at all. Most artists keep on dealing with agents and big media corporations. And most consumers keep on handing over chunks of their income to those same corporations. I've not actually bought a newspaper or a magazine in over ten years and very little in the ten before that. I regularly did this in the nineties though. There no longer is a need. I can read a lot online for free. And I do. But I do feel sort of bad for the hard working journalists producing all the content I read every day not really getting anything from me. Authors struggle not in finding their audience but in monetizing it. Ads are not the way. I'd love to have a sane way to reward them without having to micromanage the expense. If somebody builds a way for me to fairly distribute 20$/month among the authors of all the content I enjoy every month, I'd be happy to. That doesn't exist. That's money I've not been spending for decades. I spent that on Spotify and Netflix though. IMHO such a system should exist. Douglas Adams predicted it because it so obviously needs to exist. Instead we've got this endless amount of greed and stupidity preventing people from making a living from creating content because middle men peddling shitty ads for shitty products need to be payed off. The content creation is the bit I want to pay for. Everything else is redundant or can be payed for by authors as needed once they have revenue (e.g. editing is a useful service). Maybe I read a few hundred articles per month. Lets call it 200 (nice round number). That's ten cents per article. Now imagine that a journalist produces something that is read by 1 million people and that 1 percent of those actually pay that 10 cent. That's a thousand dollar. It's not a lot. But if they write maybe a few articles per month, that's a nice income. And those articles stay online for a long time. It would actually stimulate the creation of content that has a long shelf life. Passive income basically. Exactly what I want as a reader: quality content.

baq 5y ago
Anecdotally I’ve just started buying magazines last year to drop on the table for my kids to pick up and read, something I remember doing myself when I was a child. It is impossible with personalized devices to just casually stumble onto something interesting without trying to.
leobg 5y ago
This exactly. The Stripe founders point to the fact that the HTTP protocol actually includes a status code for “payment required”. So the idea of micropayments actually belonged to the original conception of the internet. It seems to me that is was is precisely because of the difficulty of receiving payment that we ended up with a few large players, and with advertising as the main vehicle for getting paid on the web - with all the consequences, including an unduly focus on short-term attention and clicks.
- hericium 5y ago
  > the idea of micropayments actually belonged to the original conception of the internet. HTTP 402 "Payment Required" is "reserved for future use" and not that old[1][2]. [1] https://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-hope-bailie-http-payments-00.html https://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-hope-bailie-http-payments-00... [2] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7231 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7231
noduerme 5y ago
Technically it wouldn't be hard, and stuff like Substack makes you think it's possible. The problem is getting the authors and publishers to agree to it. Consumers will never be able to micromanage content; one thing we've forgotten in the day of swiftly switching between ad/news platforms is that traditional media does serve a purpose as consolidators. Only the most wonkish will seek out individual writers and pay for their articles. If writers could make money that way, they would. But they have to go under contract with whomever will pay; and the WaPo isn't going to let you get through their paywall and read one journalist's post for 10¢. Also, a dime here and there doesn't pay for a middle east bureau or a team of reporters to cover an election or a war. It's unrealistic to expect reporters to risk their necks on the possibility of keeping an audience and it just might lead to the kind of unanticipated negative results that online advertising did. Me, for instance, I'm done sending any money to Matt Taibbi until he goes back to Russia, drinks at least four gallons of vodka, and gets an interview with Vlad. Should he do that for my $1? Fuck no! A world where we pay journalists directly is a world without editors, where you can't trust any information to be vetted at all. In all probability it's just some lies their personal subscribers want to hear. They may be hired whores, but at least if they work for a newspaper you know who hired them.

baq 5y ago

Anecdotally I’ve just started buying magazines last year to drop on the table for my kids to pick up and read, something I remember doing myself when I was a child. It is impossible with personalized devices to just casually stumble onto something interesting without trying to.

leobg 5y ago

This exactly. The Stripe founders point to the fact that the HTTP protocol actually includes a status code for “payment required”. So the idea of micropayments actually belonged to the original conception of the internet. It seems to me that is was is precisely because of the difficulty of receiving payment that we ended up with a few large players, and with advertising as the main vehicle for getting paid on the web - with all the consequences, including an unduly focus on short-term attention and clicks.

hericium 5y ago
> the idea of micropayments actually belonged to the original conception of the internet. HTTP 402 "Payment Required" is "reserved for future use" and not that old[1][2]. [1] https://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-hope-bailie-http-payments-00.html https://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-hope-bailie-http-payments-00... [2] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7231 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7231

noduerme 5y ago

Technically it wouldn't be hard, and stuff like Substack makes you think it's possible. The problem is getting the authors and publishers to agree to it. Consumers will never be able to micromanage content; one thing we've forgotten in the day of swiftly switching between ad/news platforms is that traditional media does serve a purpose as consolidators. Only the most wonkish will seek out individual writers and pay for their articles. If writers could make money that way, they would. But they have to go under contract with whomever will pay; and the WaPo isn't going to let you get through their paywall and read one journalist's post for 10¢. Also, a dime here and there doesn't pay for a middle east bureau or a team of reporters to cover an election or a war. It's unrealistic to expect reporters to risk their necks on the possibility of keeping an audience and it just might lead to the kind of unanticipated negative results that online advertising did. Me, for instance, I'm done sending any money to Matt Taibbi until he goes back to Russia, drinks at least four gallons of vodka, and gets an interview with Vlad. Should he do that for my $1? Fuck no! A world where we pay journalists directly is a world without editors, where you can't trust any information to be vetted at all. In all probability it's just some lies their personal subscribers want to hear. They may be hired whores, but at least if they work for a newspaper you know who hired them.