4 ms·

I would say the biggest problem is advertising. It would be much less harmful if commercial content was upfront about asking for your wallet, and the transactio

I would say the biggest problem is advertising. It would be much less harmful if commercial content was upfront about asking for your wallet, and the transaction ended there (the publisher's incentives are directly aligned with the end-customer's). Instead, we have stuff that's technically "free" but actually comes with plenty of strings attached such as mismatched incentives - the content is only there as bait and the actual objective is to get you to look at an ad or think a certain way for commercial gain. Worse, this "free" stuff being out there means there's not enough pressure to build a good, universal micropayments system to displace advertising, so the problem remains.

creeble 4y ago
Pushing like button on this.
idiotsecant 4y ago
I would hazard a guess to say that the best micropayment service in the world is going to have trouble competing with "free" for the average user.
TchoBeer 4y ago
I've said this for so long. The horrible mismatched incentives that ad money has wrought is disasterous.
HD103720b 4y ago
Not just advertising, its the ad networks that have been silently putting their finger on the scale to coax/trick the major corporate customers to support certain issues.
- genghisjahn 4y ago
  Wait, so the ad networks are the puppet masters pulling the strings of the major corporations to support...what certain issues?
  - clippablematt 4y ago
    Capitalism. It’s paperclip maximisers all the way down.
autoexec 4y ago
The reason surveillance capitalism will always win out is because with direct payments people only have to pay for something once. Even if (and I hope this never happens) we had some "perfect system" where every website was automatically paid some fee every time there was a page view, the companies behind those websites would lose money on that deal. If I own example.com and you click a link to www.example.com/somepage.html and after I serve you that page your bank account automatically transfers some small fee to me, that's the end of the transaction. You'd be done paying! Why would I want that when with surveillance capitalism you will continue to pay for the rest of your life? If I collect huge amounts of your personal information, then sure, I can make money by using it to push ads in your face (and I will), but after I do that I still have all your data. I can leverage that later in any way that benefits me. I can use it manipulate you into loading more pages on my website, I can use it to safely increase the prices of things you buy from me, I can sell and resell that same data, in whole or in part, over and over to anyone who wants it. Combined with data about others it becomes even more valuable too. You. on the other hand, will deal with the consequences of that data being used against you for your entire life. It will be used by scammers to try to trick you. It will be used by the state to control and monitor you. It will be used by other companies to take more of your money. It will be used by advertisers to manipulate you. It will be used against you in courts. It will be used against you by employers. You will never stop paying. You'll pay in ways you never imagined and in ways that aren't possible now, since your data will still be there when they become possible later. When consumers spend the rest of their lives endlessly paying for everything they have and everything they do it means more wealth and power for the few at the top. Unless your new universal micropayments system can do all that, why would corporations switch to it?

creeble 4y ago

Pushing like button on this.

idiotsecant 4y ago

I would hazard a guess to say that the best micropayment service in the world is going to have trouble competing with "free" for the average user.

TchoBeer 4y ago

I've said this for so long. The horrible mismatched incentives that ad money has wrought is disasterous.

HD103720b 4y ago

Not just advertising, its the ad networks that have been silently putting their finger on the scale to coax/trick the major corporate customers to support certain issues.

genghisjahn 4y ago
Wait, so the ad networks are the puppet masters pulling the strings of the major corporations to support...what certain issues?
- clippablematt 4y ago
  Capitalism. It’s paperclip maximisers all the way down.

autoexec 4y ago

The reason surveillance capitalism will always win out is because with direct payments people only have to pay for something once. Even if (and I hope this never happens) we had some "perfect system" where every website was automatically paid some fee every time there was a page view, the companies behind those websites would lose money on that deal. If I own example.com and you click a link to www.example.com/somepage.html and after I serve you that page your bank account automatically transfers some small fee to me, that's the end of the transaction. You'd be done paying! Why would I want that when with surveillance capitalism you will continue to pay for the rest of your life? If I collect huge amounts of your personal information, then sure, I can make money by using it to push ads in your face (and I will), but after I do that I still have all your data. I can leverage that later in any way that benefits me. I can use it manipulate you into loading more pages on my website, I can use it to safely increase the prices of things you buy from me, I can sell and resell that same data, in whole or in part, over and over to anyone who wants it. Combined with data about others it becomes even more valuable too. You. on the other hand, will deal with the consequences of that data being used against you for your entire life. It will be used by scammers to try to trick you. It will be used by the state to control and monitor you. It will be used by other companies to take more of your money. It will be used by advertisers to manipulate you. It will be used against you in courts. It will be used against you by employers. You will never stop paying. You'll pay in ways you never imagined and in ways that aren't possible now, since your data will still be there when they become possible later. When consumers spend the rest of their lives endlessly paying for everything they have and everything they do it means more wealth and power for the few at the top. Unless your new universal micropayments system can do all that, why would corporations switch to it?