4 ms·
That's explored in section 5.1 of the Szabo paper. tl;dr: you basically have to cap how much the sites can charge to avoid the pot getting drained by a bad act
by arcticbull 4y ago
That's explored in section 5.1 of the Szabo paper.
tl;dr: you basically have to cap how much the sites can charge to avoid the pot getting drained by a bad actor, but that just creates an incentive for every site to charge the maximum - why wouldn't they? There's no human deciding after all. So then you're basically deferring to, and trusting, a central actor to set the price for all this content. Then premium content makers have to demand a higher price to make the economics work, which in turn, means everyone sets their prices to the new upper tier.
That has its own serious implications, and comes with much of the same hazard as Google has today, IMO. By eliminating the agency in making that purchasing decision you eliminate much of the benefit of a market for content.
- tjoff 4y agoWhy would it have to be all or nothing. Maybe I can spend an extra literal 2 seconds for content I adore and spend an hour on, than on something I barely skim.
- AnthonyMouse 4y agoSo you need to give the site a reason not to charge the maximum. Suppose the user can choose their monthly fee, but so can the site. Anyone paying $5/month can use any of the cheapest sites. Some sites require you to be paying $50/month. The sites that require a higher monthly fee get paid more per user, but they also lose out on any money at all from users paying less than that (because they don't have access). Mass market sites will choose low rates and make it up on volume. Specialized sites with premium content can choose higher rates and still get paid with a smaller number of users. But the user is still not getting nickle and dimed, because if you're paying $50/month, you get all the $50/month tier content.
- mst 4y agoThis sounds reminiscent of the Kindle Unlimited model, and author opinions as to its usefulness to them are ... varied. Then again my brain keeps generating what it's convinced are fairer ways to do it ... and all of them so far also introduce sufficient additional friction for the user that they'd be dead on arrival.