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Blogger siderea has talked about this a lot in relation to patreon, and the challenges for any platform wanting to replace it. EDIT: https://siderea.dreamwidth

Blogger siderea has talked about this a lot in relation to patreon, and the challenges for any platform wanting to replace it. EDIT: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1824441.html https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1824441.html and https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1371510.html https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1371510.html Apparently it comes down to how card processing fees work, as long as there's a constant fixed cost per payment (whether or not there is also a percentage fee), "microtransactions" become uneconomic for the platform. Apparently the problem with letting people pay say $10 into an account and then dispense $1 a time to read articles is that makes you a "payment processor" in some states which comes with strict regulations and extra costs. EDIT2: and yes, we've already tried blockchain for that too.

exe34 2y ago
i suppose you could make a $10 donation to the site and they could give you free coupons for articles.
- adolph 2y ago
  The coupons could be on a cryptographic ledger so you have access to it from mobile/desktop/family members and any article could ask for payment from it or maybe different pricing for different sales funnel entry points. I think this is what Brave browser has set up, but I havnt been motivated enough to inquire.
  - lxgr 2y ago
    Or they could just be… in a regular old database of the issuer, who is the one that will validate them anyway when you redeem them for articles?
- lxgr 2y ago
  If the articles are still free for everyone, sure! If not, that’s not a donation, but rather a regular payment for goods and services.
  - exe34 2y ago
    do clubs count as payment processors? do hotels/bars who keep a tab with pen and paper?
    - lxgr 2y ago
      I don't know what counts or doesn't count as a payment processor exactly in these states (GP brought that up, not me). In any case, the tax status of a payment (donation or payment for goods/services received) would most likely be orthogonal to that, i.e. I don't think you could skirt any of these requirements just by saying you're taking donations.
ToucanLoucan 2y ago
I think most places get around this by having you pay for so many months at a go, instead of each month. Less flexible but I don't mind it.
fragmede 2y ago
> EDIT2: and yes, we've already tried blockchain for that too. We've not already tried blockchain for this. The rails are there, just a small matter of implementation. Everyone's too busy building shovel factories and not enough people are mining for gold to make a web3 micropayments product. I can, right now, buy $5 of solana on Coinbase, give you $0.05, with an inconsequential fee of $0.001 or so using Solana, and with enough $0.05 payments, you can cash it out via Coinbase. It works on web on desktop via a chrome extension, I'm still working out a solution for mobile. I'd love to have an Internet reading budget for the month and have that automatically get disbursed to the writer if I read past a certain point in the article. The rails are all there, just a small matter of code and then getting adoption.
- jrexilius 2y ago
  I've always thought (wished?) this was a killer app for crypto currency. I would love to have a pool of news "coins", that get auto spent on articles I choose to read. As the OP stated, I'd prefer to pay for content, but I dont have an infinite pool of $9.99-a-months..
- red_admiral 2y ago
  What would you say are the main barriers to adopting a solution like this more widely? More technical points I can think of: how fast do transactions get confirmed (If they have to wait 5 min to read a news article most people will go somewhere else)? If this becomes more popular, what stops processing fees from going up (I think this is a problem for BTC).
  - fragmede 2y ago
    Too many damn choices. Too many shovel builders leading to a paradox of choice. So many different wallets, so many different coins. The larger community is so utterly totally fractured. Which is by design, if I don't like what you're doing, instead of working together, I can take my ball and go do my own thing. Decentralization is great, except it's not. And then there's whole cryptocurrency angle. In order to buy into this, you have to buy some cryptocurrency. Maybe with something that's actually useful people won't automatically tune you out when you say "crypto" these days, but that always seemed like an uphill battle to me. Anyway, Phantom*, with Solana can do micropayments today, on mobile and desktop, it's just a small matter of coding and adoption. Transactions take 5 seconds, which isn't awesome, but is stomachable. Gas fees are fixed at 0.00015 SOL, which then varies with the exchange rate, but that's currently (Jun 2024) $0.02. This does mean it will go up as the price of SOL goes up, but, well, it's not 2016, so I don't know that anyone's expecting wild swings in the exchange rate. I am not a cryptocurrency economist though. (Nor a regular one, for that matter.) The supported golden happy path for this is anybody who can buy Solana, which would include a US person with a Coinbase account, who's willing to install their Chrome extension. The problem is mobile. The platform I'd like to support is Safari on iOS with a Safari extension, so it's seamless, but that's not there yet. What's there is to install a new app and use that app to browse, which I guess isn't the worst thing. That's all technical implementation details though, the real barrier to adoption is getting writers/authors to use this. You'd have to setup a medium/substack clone, get a bunch of content producers on it, and then get readers will appear. But once you're there, then anyone else can setup a clone and cut you out of the picture. In fact, that's the whole point, that in using Solana as the base currency, people aren't tied into your platform. So then what's the incentive for setting up the medium/substack clone if the whole point of your clone is that people don't need it. So there's no VC-level funding to build this thing because there's no VC-level payout, but you're out there competing with well funded firms for talent to build this thing. * https://phantom.app/ https://phantom.app/ (non-affiliated)
deleted 2y ago
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TZubiri 2y ago
Is netflix a payment processor?

exe34 2y ago

i suppose you could make a $10 donation to the site and they could give you free coupons for articles.

adolph 2y ago
The coupons could be on a cryptographic ledger so you have access to it from mobile/desktop/family members and any article could ask for payment from it or maybe different pricing for different sales funnel entry points. I think this is what Brave browser has set up, but I havnt been motivated enough to inquire.
- lxgr 2y ago
  Or they could just be… in a regular old database of the issuer, who is the one that will validate them anyway when you redeem them for articles?
lxgr 2y ago
If the articles are still free for everyone, sure! If not, that’s not a donation, but rather a regular payment for goods and services.
- exe34 2y ago
  do clubs count as payment processors? do hotels/bars who keep a tab with pen and paper?
  - lxgr 2y ago
    I don't know what counts or doesn't count as a payment processor exactly in these states (GP brought that up, not me). In any case, the tax status of a payment (donation or payment for goods/services received) would most likely be orthogonal to that, i.e. I don't think you could skirt any of these requirements just by saying you're taking donations.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago

I think most places get around this by having you pay for so many months at a go, instead of each month. Less flexible but I don't mind it.

fragmede 2y ago

> EDIT2: and yes, we've already tried blockchain for that too. We've not already tried blockchain for this. The rails are there, just a small matter of implementation. Everyone's too busy building shovel factories and not enough people are mining for gold to make a web3 micropayments product. I can, right now, buy $5 of solana on Coinbase, give you $0.05, with an inconsequential fee of $0.001 or so using Solana, and with enough $0.05 payments, you can cash it out via Coinbase. It works on web on desktop via a chrome extension, I'm still working out a solution for mobile. I'd love to have an Internet reading budget for the month and have that automatically get disbursed to the writer if I read past a certain point in the article. The rails are all there, just a small matter of code and then getting adoption.

jrexilius 2y ago
I've always thought (wished?) this was a killer app for crypto currency. I would love to have a pool of news "coins", that get auto spent on articles I choose to read. As the OP stated, I'd prefer to pay for content, but I dont have an infinite pool of $9.99-a-months..
red_admiral 2y ago
What would you say are the main barriers to adopting a solution like this more widely? More technical points I can think of: how fast do transactions get confirmed (If they have to wait 5 min to read a news article most people will go somewhere else)? If this becomes more popular, what stops processing fees from going up (I think this is a problem for BTC).
- fragmede 2y ago
  Too many damn choices. Too many shovel builders leading to a paradox of choice. So many different wallets, so many different coins. The larger community is so utterly totally fractured. Which is by design, if I don't like what you're doing, instead of working together, I can take my ball and go do my own thing. Decentralization is great, except it's not. And then there's whole cryptocurrency angle. In order to buy into this, you have to buy some cryptocurrency. Maybe with something that's actually useful people won't automatically tune you out when you say "crypto" these days, but that always seemed like an uphill battle to me. Anyway, Phantom*, with Solana can do micropayments today, on mobile and desktop, it's just a small matter of coding and adoption. Transactions take 5 seconds, which isn't awesome, but is stomachable. Gas fees are fixed at 0.00015 SOL, which then varies with the exchange rate, but that's currently (Jun 2024) $0.02. This does mean it will go up as the price of SOL goes up, but, well, it's not 2016, so I don't know that anyone's expecting wild swings in the exchange rate. I am not a cryptocurrency economist though. (Nor a regular one, for that matter.) The supported golden happy path for this is anybody who can buy Solana, which would include a US person with a Coinbase account, who's willing to install their Chrome extension. The problem is mobile. The platform I'd like to support is Safari on iOS with a Safari extension, so it's seamless, but that's not there yet. What's there is to install a new app and use that app to browse, which I guess isn't the worst thing. That's all technical implementation details though, the real barrier to adoption is getting writers/authors to use this. You'd have to setup a medium/substack clone, get a bunch of content producers on it, and then get readers will appear. But once you're there, then anyone else can setup a clone and cut you out of the picture. In fact, that's the whole point, that in using Solana as the base currency, people aren't tied into your platform. So then what's the incentive for setting up the medium/substack clone if the whole point of your clone is that people don't need it. So there's no VC-level funding to build this thing because there's no VC-level payout, but you're out there competing with well funded firms for talent to build this thing. * https://phantom.app/ https://phantom.app/ (non-affiliated)

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

TZubiri 2y ago

Is netflix a payment processor?