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Flattr is closing down (2023)
- taspeotis 3y ago(2023) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flattr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flattr
- skerit 3y agoOh wow, I completely forgot about Flattr. Thinking about it again, I quite liked the idea. But I guess it never really caught on enough.
- mhitza 3y agoI've used Flattr for a short period of time in early 2010s. I think it's unfortunate that the service picked up steam when most of the published content was moving from self-hosted to centralized social media platforms. Actually with a bit of marketing Flutter would have been better suited nowadays than at that time.
- mstade 3y agoI hate to be this guy, but 410 seems a more appropriate code: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/410 https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/410
- quickthrower2 3y agoAlso the page actually returns 200, disappointingly.
- hiAndrewQuinn 3y agoDon't, I had no idea there was a dedicated status for that. I'm part of today's lucky 10,000 :D
- devnine 3y agofirst thing I noticed also. I would suggest is a 417 Expectation failed. https://http.dog/417 https://http.dog/417
- teddyh 3y agoNo, that would not be appropriate, since there is no “Expect” header you could send in the request to get a successful response. From RFC 9110, HTTP Semantics: The 417 (Expectation Failed) status code indicates that the expectation given in the request's Expect header field (Section 10.1.1) could not be met by at least one of the inbound servers. — <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9110#name-417-expectation-failed https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9110#name-417-expectation-...>
- xwowsersx 3y ago> If you don't know whether this condition is temporary or permanent, a 404 status code should be used instead. Maybe they come back!
- pavlov 3y agoSomeone could buy the flattr.com domain and then the site would be live again. IMO, "410 Gone" is only appropriate for URLs that contain unique identifiers because those are guaranteed to never be recycled.
- kevincox 3y agoI thought the same thing. You aren't the only one.
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- bobse 3y ago[dead]
- onli 3y agoWas Flattr big in the US? It was a "future big thing" in my part of Europe for a while, driven by discussions in Blogs and experiments with using it for bigger projects, iirc. It seemed like it never achieved much success of leaving that bubble though. After a while I never noticed it again. I thought about it recently when noticing that a gaming journalist used Steady for his incomes, and Patreon would be the other service to mention. Looking at the timeline though, it confuses me that this was only 14 years ago. But no, that lines up with how old my own blog is. Feels far away! The web was a different place back then, and Flattr a part of that past, with a slightly different version of the future than the future we got.
- steveklabnik 3y agoI signed up for it when it was announced. I don't remember any websites I used actually using it.
- Legend2440 3y agoIt was never big. I saw a handful of open source projects and the like use it a very long time ago. But it was never a considerable source of income for them.
- cleansy 3y agoNo wonder given the company that acquired the project is rather hotly debated for "removing ads from websites just to reinsert their own." Edit: Not reinsert their own, but having advertisers pay for the pleasure to not be blocked in their "acceptable ads" program.
- pvorb 3y agoI somehow link this practice to the Brave browser, but I'm not sure about it. Does anyone know more about it?
- gertop 3y agoHe's talking about Adblock Plus, they whitelist "acceptable ads" and vendors need to pay them to be classified as such. Apparently Adblock Plus makes enough money from that practice that they managed to buy flattr in 2017.
- ffpip 3y agoBrave blocks ads on pages you browse, and then sends ad notifications to user who opt into their earning program (disabled by default). It pays them in BAT, a crypto coin they developed. If you want to, you can use these earnings to contribute to sites who have signed up to accept their crypto coin. It does not replace ads on pages with it's own.
- amadeuspagel 3y agoSeems more likely that they tried this as a desperate last attempt when things were already going down the drain.
- colesantiago 3y agoThis is very unfortunate and surprising, goes to show that even after 14 years Flattr didn't find any market. I was hoping for bitcoin and crypto to show low usage after around 15 years of no legitimate use cases other than speculation, ransomware and other scammy things, but Flattr's shutdown was a surprise. Flattr billed itself as the RSS of donations to really get rid of those ugly PayPal buttons on blogs, websites and the indie web, but unfortunately that didn't happen. Why is that? What was Flattr missing here?
- worldsayshi 3y agoMaybe one thing that held them back was that one of the founders was also founder of The Pirate Bay. Maybe potential big clients didn't want the association.
- teekert 3y agoCould also work for him, like SBF in his hoodie playing fortnite impressing bankers and such.
- atq2119 3y agoFlattr was trying to bootstrap a sort of two-sided market from scratch. They needed to get both hosts/"content providers" and clients/"users" to sign up. This is just a very, very hard problem, and if we're being honest about it, most of the success stories that come to mind got there through burning venture capital, which perhaps Flattr didn't have enough of? I don't think the idea is fundamentally flawed, it's just very difficult to do this kind of thing.
- hnbad 3y agoWell, they also made the mistake of initially trying to force both sides of the market to be one, i.e. you had to be a contributor (pay money to others) to collect money (let others pay you money). Also collecting money on behalf of others and then distributing it after sitting on it is an easy way to run afoul of anti money laundering laws in various jurisdictions. Also they did take investments which means they had to not only build a sustainable business but actually create a considerable ROI for their investors or risk them pulling the plug and cut their losses (which is presumably what happened given the lack of detail and "our wonderful journey" speak). So in other words they decided to play in hard mode (infinite growth) and then kneecapped themselves (to avoid "begging"). It's a miracle they survived this long. I had forgotten about them longer than I had used them.
- amadeuspagel 3y agoFlattr is the kind of idea that sounds great, that people love talking about - if only they could make a small donation to every website they liked - but that doesn't work because people are fundamentally too selfish. This is why ads are the only viable business model for a kind of "ephemeral website" - something you visit only briefly, derive some short knowledge or pleasure from until you follow a link somewhere else, do not feel the kind of loyalty to that might make you subscribe to something.
- infecto 3y agoSadly agree. I still wish when it came to news sites there was a micropayment option so I could read a single article for $0.10 or something along those lines.
- colesantiago 3y ago> still wish when it came to news sites there was a micropayment option so I could read a single article for $0.10 or something along those lines. Same. I'm shocked that the NYT didn't use Flattr on their articles for this. To access the full version of the NYT currently costs $0.50 a week so it would have been possible the NYT could charge $0.50 per article, or $5 for the year (one time no subscription) through Flattr or something along those lines. I could definitely see this working at scale.
- eknkc 3y agoI come across paywalled articles at least a couple of times a week. I’d gladly pay $0.50 for most of them to access the single article. It just needs to be easy, don’t make me create an account a subscription and shit like that. Things like cryptocurrencies could work great for these kinds of transactions. Shame it became what it is now.
- infecto 3y agoThats the boat I am in. I don't even care if they show me ads too, I just want to get around the paywall but I don't want to pay for a subscription.
- sunshine_reggae 3y agoNo explanation at all. Something seems kind of "fishy", some aspect of it being hidden...
- hnbad 3y ago"We ran out of money and our investors wanted to cut their losses and pulled the plug" isn't something you usually spell out in a post like this to avoid burning bridges or appearing "unprofessional".
- goda90 3y agoI had an idea just like this several years ago and seriously considered doing it as a startup but somehow never heard of Flattr. I'm curious what kind of marketing to website creators did they try. Did anyone try Google Contributor, which was a similar idea?
- DamnInteresting 3y agoI've had a similar idea simmering in my head for over 10 years, I even purchased a fitting domain name for it. It's always been a "one of these days" kind of project. My idea is different enough that it might have a shot where Flattr fell flat, but it's exceptionally hard to gather users, even if you build a superb product.
- kiddjones 3y agoSame here. Similar, but different. It's been one that I've started building out a couple times over 10ish or so years. I'm pretty sure I'd have a way to combat the issues that Flattr faced, but also, I may be wrong, so is it worth my risk?
- pikrzyszto 3y agoI used Flattr for a while but struggled with: - flattr support discovery: Instead of having a "Flattr" button on the webpage I visit I need to navigate to flattr website and search there... but I'm not going to do that. Maybe adblocker removed that button? - ownership confirmations - I wanted to donate to person $PERSON and found them on flattr. But I had no idea whether this flattr account actually belongs to $PERSON. I reached to $PERSON about that and never heard back so I stopped donating.
- manx 3y agoA browser extension sounds like a potential solution here.
- peterkelly 3y ago[flagged]
- gaiagraphia 3y agoI currently "subscribe" to the Financial Times because I use Revolut Metal. I understand it has higher quality content than elsewhere, and enjoy reading articles from there now and again, but I never would've paid for it. I wonder if 'bundling' is a way forward for content creators? Use x bank/isp/ridesharing app/delivery service, and you automatically get subscriptions to these creators. Instead of governments spending £bil on their cultural budget, surely offering the same amount to companies in tax breaks if they support cultural projects would achieve a far greater impact? Brief search showed £345m Uber Eats revenue in UK. If £3.45mil of that made its way to supporting 100 people who all had channels/sites inspiring families to eat healthier/more locally/promote local business,etc, surely this 'organic' approach could yield more than layers of civil service?
- lnxg33k1 3y agoNews should be paid for by people using it, making news dependent on government funding is bad, making news dependent on corporations is even worse, I tend to point the start of the decline of information and so democracy and plurality to the advent of blogs, free websites etc. Independent information that serves people, is funded by the people
- tonyedgecombe 3y ago>making news dependent on government funding is bad I wonder if having the government hand out tokens that you can spend on whatever media you want would be better.
- gaiagraphia 3y agoAlways been a huge fan of this as opposed to a "Tv license" type system. Being able to choose where 1% of your tax money goes each year. IIRC, Poland does something similar: "Individual taxpayers of personal income tax have an opportunity to allocate 1% of their annual tax liability to specific Polish public welfare organizations. It is an easy way of supporting a charitable initiative and it does not require additional cost or a lot of effort." https://www2.deloitte.com/pl/pl/pages/tax/articles/tax-news-financial-institutions/przekazanie-1-proc-na-rzecz-organizacji-pozytku-publicznego.html https://www2.deloitte.com/pl/pl/pages/tax/articles/tax-news-...
- potyarkin 3y agoJust the other day I was trying to remember "this weird micropayment site I used to donate to What.CD" and could not describe it coherently to a friend. It's kinda cool it was around this long
- stl_fan 3y agoBrave is building this functionality into the browser.
- sneak 3y agoUnless you have some new information, I think that was like 6 Brave pivots ago, and isn’t the case any longer.
- ystvn 3y agoWhere did you get that information from? I've never used that functionality myself, but haven't seen info indicating it got deprecated so I assumed it's still supported?
- neom 3y agoNever heard of the service before, but fun to learn the guy behind it was one of the dudes behind The Pirate Bay. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Sunde https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Sunde
- diggan 3y agoWhich speaking of, ran/runs a bunch of other useful services. IPredator (sadly no longer with us) was an alright VPN service and Njalla is (still with us) a really great domain name registrar for people who care about their privacy. Seems RIAA and MPA are still trying to go after Njalla as far as I can tell, so you get some hints that it's actually working as advertised :)
- vcoelho 3y agoI'd like to have a service where I can purchase credits and then this gets distributed between sites that I can choose to support as I visit them.
- canpolat 3y agoFor a moment I perceived that as "Flutter" and immediately thought, "Of course, Google is shutting down another project." Perhaps that's enough screen time for today.
- jkingsman 3y agoFlattr was the first time anyone paid me money for my open source/freely-hosted passion projects. It made my heart glow for a week.
- neom 3y agoCurious, do you still have your NFC implant?
- jkingsman 3y agoI do indeed! I've got two NTAG216s in my left hand, one of which lights up green when you scan it, a T5577 prox card emulator in my right hand, and a P71D321 secure element in my left arm which does onboard crypto, NFC yubikey emulation, and a few other misc. applets I've loaded onto it. My magnet implant came out around 2019, iirc. The coating ruptured, and a five year run on the old-style parylene magnets was super solid.
- night-rider 3y agoA few alternatives for micro donations that people have mentioned: https://ko-fi.com/ https://ko-fi.com/ https://github.com/sponsors https://github.com/sponsors https://www.patreon.com/ https://www.patreon.com/ https://www.buymeacoffee.com/ https://www.buymeacoffee.com/ https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/ https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/ Any others, let me know
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agohttps://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/merchant-fees#statement-11 https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/merchant-fees#statemen...
- night-rider 3y agoAnd I forgot Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/ https://liberapay.com/
- theodorewiles 3y agoI don't want to throw yet more GenAI crap at this, but could RAG be a possible innovation that unlocks microtransactions? I'm imagining a backend database of creator-submitted content. The LLM runs RAG on it, pays the creators it relied on to synthesize answers a microtransaction. Then also sells the Q-and-A as a subscription service to the end user. Maybe payouts are conditional on positive user feedback. The solution can also flag queries it sees that don't have great answers yet. Same moat as search, not reliant on advertising.
- jrflowers 3y ago“We’re using AI to build the Spotify of Yahoo Answers!”
- ben_w 3y ago> I'm imagining a backend database of creator-submitted content. The LLM runs RAG on it, pays the creators it relied on to synthesize answers a microtransaction. That sounds like you're describing Mechanical Turk? (And also "let's train an LLM on Reddit/StackOverflow). Problem is, the humans in Mechanical Turk loop were economically motivated to outsource to AI even before LLMs.
- boplicity 3y agoI don't see creators clamoring for micropayments. The reason is simple: It's not a good way to actually earn an income. Creators need stable and predictable support. Subscriptions work much better for them. It's a tried-and-true business model. What advocates of microtransactions don't see: It turns something that absolutely should not be a commodity (creative work), into a commodity. That's the fundamental failure here, and it's a big one.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- notatoad 3y ago>What advocates of microtransactions don't see: It turns something that absolutely should not be a commodity (creative work), into a commodity. as an advocate for microtransactions: yes, i see this. but i think you've got it backwards. nobody is "turning creative work into a commodity". it already is, and creators and marketplaces are both happy to treat it like one when they're selling their work. Creatives don't like micropayments because they don't like to so explicitly acknowledge that their work output is a commodity.
- egypturnash 3y agoPff, I love Patreon and I feel like that is basically "micropayments that actually work". If you look at Scott McCloud's original proposal for micropayments ([1], parts 5/6), the only thing that's really not viable is the idea that every reader paying 25¢/mo would work - in practice, transaction fees mean that about $2/mo is the minimum viable payment to actually mean something, especially when you factor in that you are not going to get every reader to pay. Luckily it turns out that you can also get some readers to pay $5/$10/$50/mo, or even more. (Factoring in inflation, that $2/mo now was about $1.12 back in 2000 when McCloud proposed the idea.) 1: http://scottmccloud.com/1-webcomics/icst/index.html http://scottmccloud.com/1-webcomics/icst/index.html
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- brcmthrowaway 3y agoSo what are the greatest swedish tech stories? Spotify, soundcloud, DICE?
- INTPenis 3y agoIf you're going to mention DICE you should mention Massive too.
- brcmthrowaway 3y agoWhat's Massive?
- INTPenis 3y agoMassive Entertainment? Who made the Snowdrop engine and The Division?
- takinola 3y agoMicropayments struggle because they add friction to the process of consuming content. Right now, if I see a great blog post, video, whatever, I spend a bit of time taking it in and then move on. With micropayments, I now have to think about how much it is worth to me (is this blog post, comment, sketch worth $0.50? $0.10?). You just turned a brainless moment of enjoyment into a value judgement where I now have to become a critic and try to create some kind of inner framework for assigning value, etc. Ads avoids all these by (relatively) frictionlessly converting attention into money. Subscriptions bundle the friction into a single event (the conversion) and remove it for all future interactions. Micropayments are just constant papercuts.
- chriswarbo 3y ago> With micropayments, I now have to think about how much it is worth to me (is this blog post, comment, sketch worth $0.50? $0.10?). You just turned a brainless moment of enjoyment into a value judgement where I now have to become a critic and try to create some kind of inner framework for assigning value, etc. That was never how Flattr worked though. Flattr was just a button that could be placed on a page (next to "Facebook Like", etc.); if you click it, they'd get a portion of your monthly donation. The whole point was to (a) be as simple to use as a Facebook "like", and (b) always cost the same per month (since the monthly donation was divided up, there was no need to worry about clicking too many things; just click what you like). > Subscriptions bundle the friction into a single event (the conversion) and remove it for all future interactions. Micropayments are just constant papercuts. Clicking someone's Flattr button twice would "subscribe" to them (automatically put them in your donations every month). So again, Flattr was pretty much designed precisely to avoid these problems that you bring up...
- takinola 3y agoThat's still a lot of friction. You would be surprised at how little friction is too much when it comes to consumer apps. Today alone, I have probably consumed a dozen or more pieces of content. I don't want to apply more thought than it takes to click a link or hit the play button. With this model, I have to (1) decide my overall monthly donation (2) decide if this content is worth donating to (3) remember to click the donate button. Sure, none of these actions is particularly onerous but it adds up over my day and I don't get any (additional) benefit from doing them. When I choose to subscribe to a creator, it is because I expect to derive sustained benefit from their work. That long(ish) term expectation of benefit is what motivates me to take the additional effort. I don't have any similar motivation for drive-by content and so I won't make the effort, however small.
- jbaber 3y agoFlattr style micro-payments doled out based on impressions of a page (or their evil twin, ads) seem more honest than subscribing a la patreon. (I subscribe to a lot of creators with patreon.) I frequently hear and read people not wanting to sponsor some youtube channel or podcast they consume for hours a week because it's "not that good". If you spent the time there, they deserve your money. I really feel for creators who produce popular material, but don't get as much remuneration as content that people are prouder of liking.
- Stratoscope 3y agoIn the 1980s, I was briefly involved with AMIX, the American Information Exchange. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Information_Exchange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Information_Exchange As an experiment, I wrote a short article and offered it for ten cents. And one person paid me that dime! Exciting times. (The Wikipedia article says that $1 was the minimum price, but this must have been before that was set.) Microsoft was paying me a dollar a word for my MSJ (Microsoft Systems Journal) articles, so that worked out better.
- tech234a 3y agoNote: They’ve been owned by Eyeo since 2017 [1]. [1]: https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/05/adblock-plus-acquires-flattr/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/05/adblock-plus-acquires-flat...
- tristor 3y agoI used Flattr for awhile but I eventually stopped, because it had low discoverability of where the money was going and it was a recurring charge structure (as I recall), but sometimes I just wanted to spiff somebody one time. It's an interesting idea, but it never really worked out, and I also didn't heavily utilize it while I was active because few creators had a Flattr profile and the other mechanisms I was too lazy to use. A lot of folks here talk about selfishness being the killer, but the reality is that it didn't have a strong UX.
- leashless 3y agoI came pretty close to getting Shuttleworth Foundation to pay Flattr to build Flattr into Ubuntu so that FOSS devs could get paid via Flattr. More than 10 years ago. Flattr were too busy. The problem was not the idea.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]