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Mircopayments (in the form of "Read this article without a subscription for 2 cents - click here") are one of those ideas that everyone claims they want but don
by AndrewStephens 4y ago
Mircopayments (in the form of "Read this article without a subscription for 2 cents - click here") are one of those ideas that everyone claims they want but don't.
The only way consumers can use micropayments is to set up a subscription via a credit card (or similar). Either with the vendor themselves or via a thirdparty. They don't want to do that.
Publishers don't want to deal with the hassle of accepting 100000 small transactions, some percentage requires them to add sales tax, some percentage will fail, and a non-zero percentage will be reversed. In the face of these problems, getting a check every month for advertises seems like a much better bet.
The closest thing to micropayments for content makers is something like Patreon, where consumers pay a small amount up-front for access to future content. But even here, a small amount is usually a few dollars rather than cents.
- imtringued 4y agoIt sounds like the only way you could possibly implement this is by having ad networks sell ad blocking. However, there are too many ad networks for this to be viable.
- AndrewStephens 4y ago"That's a real nice clean browser window you have open there. Be a shame if it was covered in popups" That would only work if the ad networks made more money off you with micropayments than they do with ads. If that was the case then you could be sure the ads would become so irritating to virtually force you to pay. Plus, instead of just having your browsing habits, the ad networks would now have your credit card details. That sounds less than optimal to me.
- gigaflop 4y agoI feel like there's a way for crypto to be useful in this problem space, but I don't have faith that the actors who build such a system would be good-natured enough to make it a healthy environment, especially after all of the scammy projects that have surfaced these past few years. I think back to when people used to tip dogecoins via a bot on Reddit. It was low-friction, low-cost, and seemed to seek no rent. A similar model may work well for micropayments (instead of microtipping), but I don't have enough faith in the current web3 sphere to develop this without it turning into a scam.
- eliblock 4y agoWhy would you need a subscription? You could just add money to your account when it runs low. And the publishers wouldn't get small transactions, they would get paid out by the platform.
- AndrewStephens 4y agoPlatforms are very difficult to manage, with both consumers (with fake credit cards, reversals, etc) and producers (faking views to farm payments) possibly trying to scam you. There is a reason that none of them have really taken off despite years of trying.