5 ms·

How do I pay the publisher of a web page?

85 points by surprisetalk 2y ago

johannes1234321 2y ago
Some people don't want to be paid. They do things as a hobby and for fun. As soon as one is being paid there is a ned to publish more and good quality stuff, which turns a fun project into work.
- elashri 2y ago
  That is sad reality. As an example, I wish Sabine Hossenfelder didn't have to leave academia. Her content (blog posts not videos) were one of the ways I kept up with development in theoretical physics. But now that she is a full time video content creator, she is under pressure to publish click bait and very questionable content. I understand that she is catering to the audience but this is one example why alignment of the incentives works. Before, she was earning her living as a working physicist so she did not have to cater to anyone actually and she produced very good content -with exceptions- for years.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    Avocations can turn into a nice revenue stream if the stars align. But online content almost certainly requires that you really work at it and think about what you need to do to boost revenue in ways that might not happen organically.
  - jasode 2y ago
    >, I wish Sabine Hossenfelder didn't have to leave academia. [...] I understand that she is catering to the audience but this is one example why alignment of the incentives works. Before, she was earning her living as a working physicist so she did not have to cater to anyone actually But this obscures the fact that she was still "catering to the audience" when working in academia as a paid physicist. She was just placating a different audience and worked on topics she really didn't think was groundbreaking just to keep the grant money rolling in. The misalignment of incentives just happened outside of Youtube. Deep link to her explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKiBlGDfRU8&t=4m37s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKiBlGDfRU8&t=4m37s A lot of viewers wish that "content creator" wasn't a thing and people just did Youtube for free as a hobby. Understandable. But what viewers don't realize is that it's also actually saying this: "Please continue being unhappy in your crappy day job so you don't need to live off money from Youtube ads or sponsorships."
    - alpinisme 2y ago
      Her personal motivations make total sense and this isn’t a judgment of her, but your comment makes it sound a little like misaligned incentives just switched places, but the misaligned research incentives remain (and she doesn’t do research professionally anymore) and now she introduced a new misalignment: the content creation business. It’s totally fair that emotionally she was done with one and able better to continue work with the other, but removing the hobby element actually did remove one set of well aligned incentives and did not replace them with another.
    - zusammen 2y ago
      [dead]
    - wkat4242 2y ago
      Not all day jobs need to be crap of course. I enjoy mine and I like to produce some content on the side. It's hard to get people to find it though due to the platforms all promoting professionals from which they earn more. But on the other hand I don't really care either.
    - johannes1234321 2y ago
      > But what viewers don't realize is that it's also actually saying this: "Please continue being unhappy in your crappy day job so you don't need to live off money from Youtube ads or sponsorships." But the reverse is also true: Not for everybody being content creator is the dream job. Some like creating something once in a while, but otherwise enjoy their life and job.
    - AlienRobot 2y ago
      Personally, I don't mind that "content creator" is a thing, but what irks me is that, at least in the Youtube I see, "content creator" is the ONLY thing. If I search for ANYTHING, I get a tutorial, or tips, or some clickbait like "I had no idea about this!" Every video is by someone whose job is Youtube. The giveaway is that all of them have custom thumbnails. Someone who just made a random video about something and posted on the free video platform wouldn't even have bothered getting a custom thumbnail for it. You can't find those videos, at all. At this point it wouldn't surprise me if a custom thumbnails was a requirement for the algorithm to consider your video even if it isn't spelled out anywhere.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- ghaff 2y ago
  Agreed. If you don't think you'll bring in material revenue (by your standards), it's often not worth collecting any at all.
- troymc 2y ago
  The web already has lots of options for people who don't want to be paid. That's not the problem! The problem is that there's no web-standard way for people who do want to be paid to indicate how.
- dangus 2y ago
  This also means that the people who want to be paid will tell you exactly how on their page. E.g., all the “buy me a coffee” links you can find on open source projects. The author of this article wants a special HTML meta property but we’ve already that solved: plain text and hyperlinks.
hkdobrev 2y ago
humans.txt [1] could be an approach for this. [1]: https://humanstxt.org/ https://humanstxt.org/
rmccue 2y ago
> I have money and I have a URL, how do I send money to the publisher of that URL? This question could easily be “I have money and I have a person’s name and address, how do I send money to them?” The only way to do this consistently would be to mail them physical cash, since there’s no way to consistently send money electronically across the world (and you’d have a currency conversion problem too - if someone mailed me US$0.23, it’s not worth exchanging it). Building micropayments infrastructure requires building broader financial infrastructure, not just adding a meta tag. This can use existing infrastructure to some extent, but it’s a pretty big challenge. (For example, in Australia, you can send someone money if you have their email address (via PayID), so you could bootstrap that part - minus the international part.)
- deleted 2y ago
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- deleted 2y ago
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- ysavir 2y ago
  I think the (not clearly stated) intention is for an automated way to detect the pubisher's explicitly preferred method of compensation. Which is a sensible request, since it can allow a browser button/extension that sends you there with the click of a button, rather than having to search the page (or a video) for a mention of it. Though in my experience, publishers and creators make it pretty easy to find that information, so the use of this tech would be very niche.
- kuschku 2y ago
  > since there’s no way to consistently send money electronically across the world In theory there'd be SWIFT, but that's too slow and expensive. The EU has the SEPA, but few other countries actually care about joining or replicating that success.
  - FinnKuhn 2y ago
    The EU is also working on a digital Euro [1] that is supposed to roll out to the whole EU and support digital payments without any fees. Let's see, if they succeed with that, but if they do it would be great. [1] https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/digital_euro/html/index.en.html https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/digital_euro/html/index.en.ht...
chr15m 2y ago
Great idea.
deleted 2y ago
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tekchip 2y ago
Isn't this the problem Brave browser set out to solve? It's just that they did it with cryptocurrency so everyone shunned it. https://brave.com/brave-rewards/ https://brave.com/brave-rewards/
- deleted 2y ago
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- carlosjobim 2y ago
  No, they block legitimate ads on creator websites and then put their own ads in front and offer creators a cut. It's an outright racket and scam.
  - jorvi 2y ago
    It’s so funny how the Brave haters will constantly outright lie just to get their point. > Do Brave Ads replace ads on websites? What do Brave Ads look like? > No, Brave Ads do not replace the ads that the Brave Browser blocks on web pages (like banner ads). You can find a list of Brave’s ad formats here. > What do Brave Ads look like? > You can choose which ones you’d like to see: images on the new tab page, cards in your Brave News feed, push notifications, and others. Creators also don’t get “a” cut. Brave gives 70% of earnings on ads to users, and those can then decide how much they reward to the creators of whatever content they consume. BAT being crypto is also nice because it automatically means you can just buy BAT directly and support sites without having to see a single ad or cumbersomely figure out how to somehow donate to each site/creator directly.
    - dpkirchner 2y ago
      From https://archive.is/W0k4j https://archive.is/W0k4j (an archive of a page on brave.com) > Step Two: Brave Replaces Ads We recognize that ads pay for most of our web content. Ads are not going away. So we replace the bad ads with Brave Ads, which we use to pay publishers and users. Maybe they don't replace ads now but they seem to have done it in the past. Or at least talked about doing it.
quaintdev 2y ago
Browsers should have pay/tip button to support website owners. And browser vendors should handle the payment. This would limit ads and tracking as well which aligns with Mozilla goals. Can I pitch this idea to Mozilla somewhere?
- nkrisc 2y ago
  Who pays for that service?
  - quaintdev 2y ago
    The browser vendors can earn small commission from each transaction. This ensures steady stream of income for them as well. They have created a piece of public infrastructure that is absolutely critical they should earn from direct payments of their users instead of relying on single entity who may or may not have their best interest at heart.
    - nkrisc 2y ago
      So if this became popular enough, then in a sense browser makers would be gatekeeping who’s allowed to receive payments. Website owners could of course still show ads or independently earn money other ways, but wouldn’t browser makers then be incentivized to tailor the browser experience to favor sites that earn them a commission?
- kelvinjps10 2y ago
  But they don't have the infrastructure to reveive the payments internationally,(apple and google do) but there wouldn't be a conflict of interest for example google with their ads businesses and imagine apple charges 30% for every transaction like the do on the apple store
- EricRiese 2y ago
  You're describing Brave
- rchaud 2y ago
noman-land 2y ago
I know this forum hates crypto but this is very doable with ENS. You can both point to content via an ENS domain and also link to a wallet address. https://ens.domains/ https://ens.domains/ Come to think of it you can do this with normal DNS by just setting a wallet address in a TXT record but that's not integrated into anything. It's just text.
- deleted 2y ago
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- sneak 2y ago
  We don’t hate crypto, there are just a loud bunch that like to complain about other people using it. Lots of us are building and using daily.
- rchaud 2y ago
  There's a difference between 'doable' and 'viable'. People want to be paid in cash. Not some internet money that has to go through an exchange to be converted into actual cash. If ENS was so great, people would already be using it.
deleted 2y ago
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gr4vityWall 2y ago
I don't see much of a point. If someone makes a website and wants people to be able to send money to them for that, a link on that website should work just fine. I'm failing to see the benefit of a HTML meta tag related to that. > I wish I could click a button to easily send a "tip" to someone who created something I enjoy or to browse other options for supporting them. I believe most people invested in getting donations already have a similar button on their page.
- Drakim 2y ago
  Plus, to me it seems like this could be ripe for abuse. If you are reading a great post on something, how do you know if the HTML meta tag actually would go to the author of that post, or the hosting platform instead (who sneakily puts in that meta tag on all their hosted content). With an explicit button, you have to read and acknowledge who you are giving to.
butz 2y ago
Worst part about such small payments is that intermediary, that will process the payment, might get 50% or even more of said payment, leaving not much to receiver. If someone really wants support, they will either have a link to "merch" store, or links to Patreon, Kofi or some other platform. Worth noting, that content creators usually seek recurring payments, not a single tip.
- Suppafly 2y ago
  >Worst part about such small payments is that intermediary, that will process the payment, might get 50% or even more of said payment, leaving not much to receiver. Yeah you essentially need a system has an internal balance that would then let you send and receive micropayments and only convert them to cash when the balance is large enough that the processing fee makes sense.
paxys 2y ago
The open web is a platform for freeloaders. Since day 1 the expectation is that whatever is accessible will be free. And whatever isn't will be made free by whatever means necessary. Web content creators/publishers don't bother with micropayments infrastructure because no one is going to pay. Ads are a proven business model and they are going to stay. There are other platforms where micropayments have in fact been solved – see Twitch, OnlyFans, YouTube, Substack, Patreon, IAP on iOS/Android, WeChat, Gaming. That's where the innovation in the space will be because that's where the money is.
- idle_zealot 2y ago
  > That's where the innovation in the space will be because that's where the money is. Agreed completely, assuming that "innovation" is a euphemism for "grifting". These platforms are completely dominated by rent-seeking and borderline fraudulent garbage. I'd take a web ring over the front page of the App Store in any context.
- QuiDortDine 2y ago
  "Solved" in the sense that Twitch gets 50% of the payment. This is an outrageous cut.
- alan 2y ago
  7 years ago I tried to start a project to allow customers to pay through the ad networks. IE rather than seeing ads, you'd see something saying how much you were providing to the web page owner. I've so far been unable to actually build it though.
  - jimmydoe 2y ago
    Advertisers want more scale; consumers want no ads. You are in the middle to please no one.
grues-dinner 2y ago
This is the one thing that I actually thought cryptocurrency would help - getting small adhoc payments out from under the bootheel of Mastercard and Visa, and especially for international transfers that cross between, say, the MC/Visa duopoly regions into other ones like the Asian ecosystems. But instead it's slow, inconsistent, inconvenient, balkanised, dripping with scams, criminals and bad actors and still involves substantial transfer fees and volatility on top of that. At this point it's a market for lemons: any new cryptocurrency venture is almost entirely indistinguishable from something that already ended up being at best a non-starter, but often just a scam. As a vehicle for speculation, arbitrage and scams, it's a masterpiece. As a currency (you know, like in the name), it's, put lightly, not great, especially if you live in the developed world.
- interactivecode 2y ago
  Fully agree. We should just settle on a single internet currency thats fast, interoperable and not a market for speculation. Hmm perhaps we don’t need more types of currency? Perhaps it’s better to push deep integration of modern banking changes like psd2, psd3 and others. Across the whole internet. So everyone can just do regular payments with their own bank in a safe and protected way, and hopefully with less intermediaries.
  - grues-dinner 2y ago
    Yes, indeed. The thing is MasterCard, Visa and all their foreign counterparts actually do provide a lot of value in keeping the ecosystem relatively safe for normal people. When I see a contactless touch point in a shop, I know it's almost certainly legit. If they didn't, people would just use cash. So there's probably always going to be some kind of transfer or network access fee. It's just that it very much not a competitive market place. Opening up the system to competition, but still within a regulatory framework that prevents it degenerating into a Wild West hotbed of scamming does seem like a good way to achieve some of that. Certainly, the vaunted "free market" should be ensuring that the price of a transaction is pretty close to the cost of providing it, and it clearly is not currently. The problem, or feature, depending on who you ask, is that basically only governments can provide that kind of regulation. Which will always then inject a level of geopolitics into things like which countries you're allowed to buy your blog posts from. And for governments who listen to business over citizens also leads to capture and subversion of the system.
sneak 2y ago
This is a relatively straightforward problem to solve. There is a “payment required” HTTP status code and lightning network micropayments are very easy to set up and use. The problem is that payments that cannot be centrally surveilled and centrally vetoed (without burden of proof of probable cause, usually) are actually illegal to implement. To do anything like this requires strong ID and KYC for payer and recipient and that isn’t what bare URLs and the web are about. All of the cool applications of online payments that would spread quickly and efficiently are illegal. It’s truly sad.
- csumtin 2y ago
  I think another problem with micropayments is competing with free is hard. Say you have the best lightning paywall with an amazing UX where it's super easy and automatic to pay a creator a few sats. Most people assume the problem is user's don't want to pay but it's actually publishers who won't put up micropayments on their content. Here's why: for a big publisher, adding a lightning paywall is a big risk which may lose them their audience. For small publisher's, they don't care if 10 people send 10 sats, all they care about is becoming a big publisher
  - knorker 2y ago
    > it's actually publishers who won't put up micropayments on their content Won't, or can't? Do you have a good article about how to set up a paywall or tip jar for small transactions, with a clear description of what percentage goes to middlemen and (mainly in the case of proof of work) how much externality cost it incurs? I would like to be able to pay $cents or even $dollar for instant access to an article, but only if X% actually goes to the recipient (I don't know what X is, yet), and I would lead by example on my own content. (though most likely tip jar, not paywall)
    - csumtin 2y ago
      Soz for the late reply. I think you kind of answered your own question. It's not can't, it's won't as you are willing to add tipping but not a paywall to your content :D So for context, we built a lightning paywall(now defunct). All you had to do was add a single line of js to your site, as easy as Google analytics/ads. The cost was 0.01% of transaction. You could even move to self hosting and not pay us. Finally, we even built an "auto payer" so users could approve a site and auto pay a few cents with limits. Anyways, our experience is content publishers said they wanted to monetize their content but when it came down to it, were extremely reluctant to add a paywall and would maybe think of adding tipping. Anyways I think our solution was great but no product market fit. I was especially proud how private the whole thing was but users didn't seem to really value that
waxpancake 2y ago
The Web Monetization API was another recent effort to try to make this, the latest of many attempts. See previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39274455 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39274455 My guess is that 1. there’s virtually no demand from potential supporters for a more convenient way to pay creators than existing payment/subscription apps, and 2. relatively few creators have direct control over their own internet presence anymore, so any solution that requires modifying a web page is dead in the water. Any new attempt to pay creators that doesn’t factor these two realities in will likely fail, because it just makes things harder than existing solutions.
uxhacker 2y ago
Is this the same issue with content creators being reimbursed for generative ai?
montenegrohugo 2y ago
Honestly this is one of the main usecases of crypto, in my opinion. And it's only in 2024 where the transaction costs are cheap enough that it's worth it. Still, fragmentation of crypto makes the whole experience shitty - but we've been working on this to fix that: https://docs.peanut.to/checkout-api https://docs.peanut.to/checkout-api
- try_the_bass 2y ago
  Crypto's obsession with public blockchains and the requisite fees to make this work prevent this from being a viable solution. Those transaction costs you're talking about are still a couple orders of magnitude (or more!) too high for this to be a viable solution for these kinds of micro payments. This doesn't even get into the necessary transaction throughput that's still it's own unsolved problem
- Suppafly 2y ago
  >Honestly this is one of the main usecases of crypto, in my opinion. The problem is that crypto doesn't provide anything that non-crypto shouldn't wouldn't also provide in a cheaper and easier to implement way.
  - akimbostrawman 2y ago
    Please show me the this revolution non-crypto payment method that offers transferring currency/value: - worldwide - private - anonymous - no middle man - no censorship - costs 0.0X per transaction - take less than 10 minutes
    - Suppafly 2y ago
      Not all of those are necessary and not all of them are even necessarily desirable.
      - akimbostrawman 2y ago
        Disagree. They are exactly what makes them desirable and useful. If you don't think so consider yourself lucky or ignorant.
rhplus 2y ago
We’re three decades in with the web and it’s pretty clear that voluntary payment nudges don’t work. Most people won’t pay for free content after they’ve consumed it. Humans need an extra incentive to pay for free content. This is why so many sponsorship platforms are effectively subscription models with additional exclusive content or early access. And for that to work, you need more than just a payment button, you need a content publishing platform that will handle all the subs and content gating.
- wat10000 2y ago
  I don’t think payment friction has been reduced nearly enough to make that statement. If it was possible to click a button to instantly send ten cents to the creator of an article, and people still didn’t do it, then we could conclude that it doesn’t work. But we’re extremely far from that now.
  - Suppafly 2y ago
    This, people want micropayments but the market won't figure out a way to provide a service for that.
- etskinner 2y ago
  I think you're missing a small yet significant portion of people who will pay for content after consuming it. Off the top of my head I've "tipped" after the fact for: An awesome free work time recording app, "free" walking tours when I'm traveling, free online chess, Wikipedia — all after using them.
  - rchaud 2y ago
    Most people won't do that though. The walking tour is an example of a situation where there is likely a societal expectation to tip. No such thing on the internet where the publisher is a faceless unknown.
- Suppafly 2y ago
  >We’re three decades in with the web and it’s pretty clear that voluntary payment nudges don’t work. Most people won’t pay for free content after they’ve consumed it. Humans have no problem tipping, the issue is that a single article or piece of content is rarely worth than a fractional amount of whatever your preferred currency is, and it costs more than that amount to transfer that currency. Sponsorships work because you pay normal amounts of currency to receive a larger future block of content. To make tipping work, you need a system that supports allowing you to deposit normal sums of money but then dole it out in micropayments, and also not charge more than those payments for processing the micropayments. A payment system like Paypal, that maintains an internal balance that is used instead of just transferring from one bank account to another (zelle, venmo), could handle this but I don't think the financial incentives are there for them to bother with it.
kelvinjps10 2y ago
Sorry, but I don't really see the problem, I mean someone that wants to get paid will make sure to let you know where to pay them.
micropayer 2y ago
[dead]
havnagiggle 2y ago
Seems fairly simple to have a smart contract do a DNS validation to unlock funds. For example, someone sends to a contract "$1 to example.com". Then the URL owner publishes either a TXT file or DNS record that has a list of crypto wallet addresses. Contract then forwards the payments. You could even make the keys just the ISO codes for each currency. It's as good of a proof for TLS certs, but it's susceptible to DNS hijacking, etc. Make the contract immutable to meet tornado.cash standard. There are already oracles for DNS lookups so this contract might already exist somewhere. Add in a couple of features: 1. Allow tracking per domain so publishers can know that there is a demand to set it up on their end. 2. Allow refunds in case the publisher never opens it up.
- numtel 2y ago
  You're very close to https://prove.email/ https://prove.email/
EricRiese 2y ago
Isn't the solution for Patreon et al to offer embeddable widgets that implement the Payments Request API?
mediumsmart 2y ago
You scan the qrcode on the page which will launch your banking app that initiates the transfer and fills out the details leaving for you to enter the amount and the fingerprint confirmation to send it off.
zoezoezoezoe 2y ago
I think the way you support publishers is one of a few things * they list a patreon or librepay or whatever and you support them directly * They have ads and they ask you nicely to disable your adblocker (as long as they are unobtrusive I'm fine with this) I think that's really it, if publishers dont give you a clear way to support them, in my eyes, they are providing the service for free.
- rullelito 2y ago
  But crypto..
  - zoezoezoezoe 2y ago
    if you want to me to send you crypto, put a BTC or, preferably, Monero address in the footer or whatever.
SethMLarson 2y ago
Author here! My primary motivation is to tip the hundreds of web creators that I enjoy every year without linearly increasing my spend (I can only afford so many $3/month Patreons). It's manual for now, but the computer tracks who to pay next, who to stop paying, and give you links to speed up the process. See: https://fosstodon.org/@sethmlarson/113575887792359030 https://fosstodon.org/@sethmlarson/113575887792359030 Happy to answer questions :)
edward 2y ago
It's worth noting that Ted Nelson's visionary Xanadu project had actually addressed this issue decades ago. In the original design of Project Xanadu, rule 9 states "Every document can contain a royalty mechanism at any desired degree of granularity to ensure payment on any portion accessed, including virtual copies ('transclusions') of all or part of the document." This suggests a foresighted approach to content monetisation which the modern web, in many ways an unfinished hypertext prototype, still lacks. Nelson's idea was to embed financial transactions directly into the fabric of document interchange, an integration not yet realised in today's digital content landscape. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu#Original_17_rules https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu#Original_17_rul...
- lmm 2y ago
  > It's worth noting that Ted Nelson's visionary Xanadu project had actually addressed this issue decades ago. In the original design of Project Xanadu, rule 9 states "Every document can contain a royalty mechanism at any desired degree of granularity to ensure payment on any portion accessed, including virtual copies ('transclusions') of all or part of the document." It's easy to address every possible issue when your project is vaporware and you can just write "royalty mechanism" rather than having to actually implement one.
  - stavros 2y ago
    Yeah, wow. Saying that someone addressed the issue by writing "documents can contain a royalty mechanism" is like saying Jules Verne addressed the issue of manned spaceflight.
fjfaase 2y ago
The European Union is working on a standard for QR-code payments [1]. In the Netherlands, most banking app already understand QR-code for payments. There are serviced that offer a possibility to ask for a payment without a specified amount that do not the reveal the bank account of the requester. If this could be turned into a world wide standard, one could add a link to a QR code in a web page to request for donations. One should realize that there are very different payments systems in the world and that there are payment companies, think credit card companies, that have good reasons to resist these kind of global standards. [1] https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/document-library/guidance-documents/standardisation-qr-codes-mscts https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/document-library/guid...
Funes- 2y ago
If they'd fancy a donation, they'd have a visible button or section on their website so anyone interested could send it their way. Liberapay looks like a decent alternative to Patreon. Crypto (XMR, namely) is also a good option.
AlienRobot 2y ago
This could be solved with a simple <link> standard. If we're talking "direct" payments, as much as it pains me to say it, it would be bitcoin, wouldn't it? Just put a wallet address in a <meta> and you're done. But with its operational overhead it may be a waste for micro-transactions compared to traditional payment methods. To be honest, the real problem isn't that there is no way to mark this up, is that even if there WAS a way to mark this up, most people wouldn't because it's not a browser API. People don't even use RSS because browsers don't tell users about RSS links. There needs to be a tangible consequence of using a tag for people to bother with it. If a $ doesn't appear on the address bar, what is the point?
6510 2y ago
This week someone finally vandalized an old long forgotten sign at the train station. It's purpose was to ask the traveler not to walk on the rails. It said because of delays 30 000 people were late for their appointment every year. It attempted to appeal to a kind of decency and care for others that just doesn't exist anymore. It is also true that no one walks on the rails anymore. The answer to the riddle, how to pay the publisher: You make your own website and write your own article(s) If the reward worthy publisher wrote something that fits the context of your website (or one of them) and it is worth reading for your readers you make a link to it. <a href=""> etc An endorsement like that, from the right person, is worth a lot but it is not required. You just make a nice article for other people, they could do the same. We all win or lose together.
pixodaros 2y ago
I'm out of the web dev game but wouldn't you just write code to search for links to the ten or so most popular wrappers for Paypal or Stripe and then an API to perform the transaction? That should cover 99% of the actual payments that happen (there are LiberaPay and crypto schemes and bank transfer and SEPA for nerds). I think that basically all the money that moves to support free webpages is through PayPal or Stripe, maybe a few percent by the EU SEPA and Canadian eTransfer systems. Realistically you Ctrl-F "donate / Paypal / Patreon / support" and click that link. Good web design should make it clear on a screen and in the code what is site content and what is third-party content such as comments with spam links.
bombi 2y ago
[dead]
lofaszvanitt 2y ago
I wrote about a country or worldwide like system before that would do automatic funding to visited webpages: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40972106 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40972106 Would be nice for the EU to implement such a feature.

85 points by surprisetalk 2y ago

Some people don't want to be paid. They do things as a hobby and for fun. As soon as one is being paid there is a ned to publish more and good quality stuff, which turns a fun project into work.

elashri 2y ago
That is sad reality. As an example, I wish Sabine Hossenfelder didn't have to leave academia. Her content (blog posts not videos) were one of the ways I kept up with development in theoretical physics. But now that she is a full time video content creator, she is under pressure to publish click bait and very questionable content. I understand that she is catering to the audience but this is one example why alignment of the incentives works. Before, she was earning her living as a working physicist so she did not have to cater to anyone actually and she produced very good content -with exceptions- for years.
- ghaff 2y ago
  Avocations can turn into a nice revenue stream if the stars align. But online content almost certainly requires that you really work at it and think about what you need to do to boost revenue in ways that might not happen organically.
- jasode 2y ago
  >, I wish Sabine Hossenfelder didn't have to leave academia. [...] I understand that she is catering to the audience but this is one example why alignment of the incentives works. Before, she was earning her living as a working physicist so she did not have to cater to anyone actually But this obscures the fact that she was still "catering to the audience" when working in academia as a paid physicist. She was just placating a different audience and worked on topics she really didn't think was groundbreaking just to keep the grant money rolling in. The misalignment of incentives just happened outside of Youtube. Deep link to her explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKiBlGDfRU8&t=4m37s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKiBlGDfRU8&t=4m37s A lot of viewers wish that "content creator" wasn't a thing and people just did Youtube for free as a hobby. Understandable. But what viewers don't realize is that it's also actually saying this: "Please continue being unhappy in your crappy day job so you don't need to live off money from Youtube ads or sponsorships."
  - alpinisme 2y ago
    Her personal motivations make total sense and this isn’t a judgment of her, but your comment makes it sound a little like misaligned incentives just switched places, but the misaligned research incentives remain (and she doesn’t do research professionally anymore) and now she introduced a new misalignment: the content creation business. It’s totally fair that emotionally she was done with one and able better to continue work with the other, but removing the hobby element actually did remove one set of well aligned incentives and did not replace them with another.
  - zusammen 2y ago
    [dead]
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    Not all day jobs need to be crap of course. I enjoy mine and I like to produce some content on the side. It's hard to get people to find it though due to the platforms all promoting professionals from which they earn more. But on the other hand I don't really care either.
  - johannes1234321 2y ago
    > But what viewers don't realize is that it's also actually saying this: "Please continue being unhappy in your crappy day job so you don't need to live off money from Youtube ads or sponsorships." But the reverse is also true: Not for everybody being content creator is the dream job. Some like creating something once in a while, but otherwise enjoy their life and job.
  - AlienRobot 2y ago
    Personally, I don't mind that "content creator" is a thing, but what irks me is that, at least in the Youtube I see, "content creator" is the ONLY thing. If I search for ANYTHING, I get a tutorial, or tips, or some clickbait like "I had no idea about this!" Every video is by someone whose job is Youtube. The giveaway is that all of them have custom thumbnails. Someone who just made a random video about something and posted on the free video platform wouldn't even have bothered getting a custom thumbnail for it. You can't find those videos, at all. At this point it wouldn't surprise me if a custom thumbnails was a requirement for the algorithm to consider your video even if it isn't spelled out anywhere.
- deleted 2y ago
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ghaff 2y ago
Agreed. If you don't think you'll bring in material revenue (by your standards), it's often not worth collecting any at all.
troymc 2y ago
The web already has lots of options for people who don't want to be paid. That's not the problem! The problem is that there's no web-standard way for people who do want to be paid to indicate how.
dangus 2y ago
This also means that the people who want to be paid will tell you exactly how on their page. E.g., all the “buy me a coffee” links you can find on open source projects. The author of this article wants a special HTML meta property but we’ve already that solved: plain text and hyperlinks.

hkdobrev 2y ago

humans.txt [1] could be an approach for this. [1]: https://humanstxt.org/ https://humanstxt.org/

rmccue 2y ago

> I have money and I have a URL, how do I send money to the publisher of that URL? This question could easily be “I have money and I have a person’s name and address, how do I send money to them?” The only way to do this consistently would be to mail them physical cash, since there’s no way to consistently send money electronically across the world (and you’d have a currency conversion problem too - if someone mailed me US$0.23, it’s not worth exchanging it). Building micropayments infrastructure requires building broader financial infrastructure, not just adding a meta tag. This can use existing infrastructure to some extent, but it’s a pretty big challenge. (For example, in Australia, you can send someone money if you have their email address (via PayID), so you could bootstrap that part - minus the international part.)

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ysavir 2y ago
I think the (not clearly stated) intention is for an automated way to detect the pubisher's explicitly preferred method of compensation. Which is a sensible request, since it can allow a browser button/extension that sends you there with the click of a button, rather than having to search the page (or a video) for a mention of it. Though in my experience, publishers and creators make it pretty easy to find that information, so the use of this tech would be very niche.
kuschku 2y ago
> since there’s no way to consistently send money electronically across the world In theory there'd be SWIFT, but that's too slow and expensive. The EU has the SEPA, but few other countries actually care about joining or replicating that success.
- FinnKuhn 2y ago
  The EU is also working on a digital Euro [1] that is supposed to roll out to the whole EU and support digital payments without any fees. Let's see, if they succeed with that, but if they do it would be great. [1] https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/digital_euro/html/index.en.html https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/digital_euro/html/index.en.ht...

chr15m 2y ago

Great idea.

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tekchip 2y ago

Isn't this the problem Brave browser set out to solve? It's just that they did it with cryptocurrency so everyone shunned it. https://brave.com/brave-rewards/ https://brave.com/brave-rewards/

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carlosjobim 2y ago
No, they block legitimate ads on creator websites and then put their own ads in front and offer creators a cut. It's an outright racket and scam.
- jorvi 2y ago
  It’s so funny how the Brave haters will constantly outright lie just to get their point. > Do Brave Ads replace ads on websites? What do Brave Ads look like? > No, Brave Ads do not replace the ads that the Brave Browser blocks on web pages (like banner ads). You can find a list of Brave’s ad formats here. > What do Brave Ads look like? > You can choose which ones you’d like to see: images on the new tab page, cards in your Brave News feed, push notifications, and others. Creators also don’t get “a” cut. Brave gives 70% of earnings on ads to users, and those can then decide how much they reward to the creators of whatever content they consume. BAT being crypto is also nice because it automatically means you can just buy BAT directly and support sites without having to see a single ad or cumbersomely figure out how to somehow donate to each site/creator directly.
  - dpkirchner 2y ago
    From https://archive.is/W0k4j https://archive.is/W0k4j (an archive of a page on brave.com) > Step Two: Brave Replaces Ads We recognize that ads pay for most of our web content. Ads are not going away. So we replace the bad ads with Brave Ads, which we use to pay publishers and users. Maybe they don't replace ads now but they seem to have done it in the past. Or at least talked about doing it.

quaintdev 2y ago

Browsers should have pay/tip button to support website owners. And browser vendors should handle the payment. This would limit ads and tracking as well which aligns with Mozilla goals. Can I pitch this idea to Mozilla somewhere?

nkrisc 2y ago
Who pays for that service?
- quaintdev 2y ago
  The browser vendors can earn small commission from each transaction. This ensures steady stream of income for them as well. They have created a piece of public infrastructure that is absolutely critical they should earn from direct payments of their users instead of relying on single entity who may or may not have their best interest at heart.
  - nkrisc 2y ago
    So if this became popular enough, then in a sense browser makers would be gatekeeping who’s allowed to receive payments. Website owners could of course still show ads or independently earn money other ways, but wouldn’t browser makers then be incentivized to tailor the browser experience to favor sites that earn them a commission?
kelvinjps10 2y ago
But they don't have the infrastructure to reveive the payments internationally,(apple and google do) but there wouldn't be a conflict of interest for example google with their ads businesses and imagine apple charges 30% for every transaction like the do on the apple store
EricRiese 2y ago
You're describing Brave
rchaud 2y ago

noman-land 2y ago

I know this forum hates crypto but this is very doable with ENS. You can both point to content via an ENS domain and also link to a wallet address. https://ens.domains/ https://ens.domains/ Come to think of it you can do this with normal DNS by just setting a wallet address in a TXT record but that's not integrated into anything. It's just text.

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sneak 2y ago
We don’t hate crypto, there are just a loud bunch that like to complain about other people using it. Lots of us are building and using daily.
rchaud 2y ago
There's a difference between 'doable' and 'viable'. People want to be paid in cash. Not some internet money that has to go through an exchange to be converted into actual cash. If ENS was so great, people would already be using it.

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gr4vityWall 2y ago

I don't see much of a point. If someone makes a website and wants people to be able to send money to them for that, a link on that website should work just fine. I'm failing to see the benefit of a HTML meta tag related to that. > I wish I could click a button to easily send a "tip" to someone who created something I enjoy or to browse other options for supporting them. I believe most people invested in getting donations already have a similar button on their page.

Drakim 2y ago
Plus, to me it seems like this could be ripe for abuse. If you are reading a great post on something, how do you know if the HTML meta tag actually would go to the author of that post, or the hosting platform instead (who sneakily puts in that meta tag on all their hosted content). With an explicit button, you have to read and acknowledge who you are giving to.

butz 2y ago

Worst part about such small payments is that intermediary, that will process the payment, might get 50% or even more of said payment, leaving not much to receiver. If someone really wants support, they will either have a link to "merch" store, or links to Patreon, Kofi or some other platform. Worth noting, that content creators usually seek recurring payments, not a single tip.

Suppafly 2y ago
>Worst part about such small payments is that intermediary, that will process the payment, might get 50% or even more of said payment, leaving not much to receiver. Yeah you essentially need a system has an internal balance that would then let you send and receive micropayments and only convert them to cash when the balance is large enough that the processing fee makes sense.

paxys 2y ago

The open web is a platform for freeloaders. Since day 1 the expectation is that whatever is accessible will be free. And whatever isn't will be made free by whatever means necessary. Web content creators/publishers don't bother with micropayments infrastructure because no one is going to pay. Ads are a proven business model and they are going to stay. There are other platforms where micropayments have in fact been solved – see Twitch, OnlyFans, YouTube, Substack, Patreon, IAP on iOS/Android, WeChat, Gaming. That's where the innovation in the space will be because that's where the money is.

idle_zealot 2y ago
> That's where the innovation in the space will be because that's where the money is. Agreed completely, assuming that "innovation" is a euphemism for "grifting". These platforms are completely dominated by rent-seeking and borderline fraudulent garbage. I'd take a web ring over the front page of the App Store in any context.
QuiDortDine 2y ago
"Solved" in the sense that Twitch gets 50% of the payment. This is an outrageous cut.
alan 2y ago
7 years ago I tried to start a project to allow customers to pay through the ad networks. IE rather than seeing ads, you'd see something saying how much you were providing to the web page owner. I've so far been unable to actually build it though.
- jimmydoe 2y ago
  Advertisers want more scale; consumers want no ads. You are in the middle to please no one.

grues-dinner 2y ago

This is the one thing that I actually thought cryptocurrency would help - getting small adhoc payments out from under the bootheel of Mastercard and Visa, and especially for international transfers that cross between, say, the MC/Visa duopoly regions into other ones like the Asian ecosystems. But instead it's slow, inconsistent, inconvenient, balkanised, dripping with scams, criminals and bad actors and still involves substantial transfer fees and volatility on top of that. At this point it's a market for lemons: any new cryptocurrency venture is almost entirely indistinguishable from something that already ended up being at best a non-starter, but often just a scam. As a vehicle for speculation, arbitrage and scams, it's a masterpiece. As a currency (you know, like in the name), it's, put lightly, not great, especially if you live in the developed world.

interactivecode 2y ago
Fully agree. We should just settle on a single internet currency thats fast, interoperable and not a market for speculation. Hmm perhaps we don’t need more types of currency? Perhaps it’s better to push deep integration of modern banking changes like psd2, psd3 and others. Across the whole internet. So everyone can just do regular payments with their own bank in a safe and protected way, and hopefully with less intermediaries.
- grues-dinner 2y ago
  Yes, indeed. The thing is MasterCard, Visa and all their foreign counterparts actually do provide a lot of value in keeping the ecosystem relatively safe for normal people. When I see a contactless touch point in a shop, I know it's almost certainly legit. If they didn't, people would just use cash. So there's probably always going to be some kind of transfer or network access fee. It's just that it very much not a competitive market place. Opening up the system to competition, but still within a regulatory framework that prevents it degenerating into a Wild West hotbed of scamming does seem like a good way to achieve some of that. Certainly, the vaunted "free market" should be ensuring that the price of a transaction is pretty close to the cost of providing it, and it clearly is not currently. The problem, or feature, depending on who you ask, is that basically only governments can provide that kind of regulation. Which will always then inject a level of geopolitics into things like which countries you're allowed to buy your blog posts from. And for governments who listen to business over citizens also leads to capture and subversion of the system.

sneak 2y ago

This is a relatively straightforward problem to solve. There is a “payment required” HTTP status code and lightning network micropayments are very easy to set up and use. The problem is that payments that cannot be centrally surveilled and centrally vetoed (without burden of proof of probable cause, usually) are actually illegal to implement. To do anything like this requires strong ID and KYC for payer and recipient and that isn’t what bare URLs and the web are about. All of the cool applications of online payments that would spread quickly and efficiently are illegal. It’s truly sad.

csumtin 2y ago
I think another problem with micropayments is competing with free is hard. Say you have the best lightning paywall with an amazing UX where it's super easy and automatic to pay a creator a few sats. Most people assume the problem is user's don't want to pay but it's actually publishers who won't put up micropayments on their content. Here's why: for a big publisher, adding a lightning paywall is a big risk which may lose them their audience. For small publisher's, they don't care if 10 people send 10 sats, all they care about is becoming a big publisher
- knorker 2y ago
  > it's actually publishers who won't put up micropayments on their content Won't, or can't? Do you have a good article about how to set up a paywall or tip jar for small transactions, with a clear description of what percentage goes to middlemen and (mainly in the case of proof of work) how much externality cost it incurs? I would like to be able to pay $cents or even $dollar for instant access to an article, but only if X% actually goes to the recipient (I don't know what X is, yet), and I would lead by example on my own content. (though most likely tip jar, not paywall)
  - csumtin 2y ago
    Soz for the late reply. I think you kind of answered your own question. It's not can't, it's won't as you are willing to add tipping but not a paywall to your content :D So for context, we built a lightning paywall(now defunct). All you had to do was add a single line of js to your site, as easy as Google analytics/ads. The cost was 0.01% of transaction. You could even move to self hosting and not pay us. Finally, we even built an "auto payer" so users could approve a site and auto pay a few cents with limits. Anyways, our experience is content publishers said they wanted to monetize their content but when it came down to it, were extremely reluctant to add a paywall and would maybe think of adding tipping. Anyways I think our solution was great but no product market fit. I was especially proud how private the whole thing was but users didn't seem to really value that

waxpancake 2y ago

The Web Monetization API was another recent effort to try to make this, the latest of many attempts. See previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39274455 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39274455 My guess is that 1. there’s virtually no demand from potential supporters for a more convenient way to pay creators than existing payment/subscription apps, and 2. relatively few creators have direct control over their own internet presence anymore, so any solution that requires modifying a web page is dead in the water. Any new attempt to pay creators that doesn’t factor these two realities in will likely fail, because it just makes things harder than existing solutions.

uxhacker 2y ago

Is this the same issue with content creators being reimbursed for generative ai?

montenegrohugo 2y ago

Honestly this is one of the main usecases of crypto, in my opinion. And it's only in 2024 where the transaction costs are cheap enough that it's worth it. Still, fragmentation of crypto makes the whole experience shitty - but we've been working on this to fix that: https://docs.peanut.to/checkout-api https://docs.peanut.to/checkout-api

try_the_bass 2y ago
Crypto's obsession with public blockchains and the requisite fees to make this work prevent this from being a viable solution. Those transaction costs you're talking about are still a couple orders of magnitude (or more!) too high for this to be a viable solution for these kinds of micro payments. This doesn't even get into the necessary transaction throughput that's still it's own unsolved problem
Suppafly 2y ago
>Honestly this is one of the main usecases of crypto, in my opinion. The problem is that crypto doesn't provide anything that non-crypto shouldn't wouldn't also provide in a cheaper and easier to implement way.
- akimbostrawman 2y ago
  Please show me the this revolution non-crypto payment method that offers transferring currency/value: - worldwide - private - anonymous - no middle man - no censorship - costs 0.0X per transaction - take less than 10 minutes
  - Suppafly 2y ago
    Not all of those are necessary and not all of them are even necessarily desirable.
    - akimbostrawman 2y ago
      Disagree. They are exactly what makes them desirable and useful. If you don't think so consider yourself lucky or ignorant.

rhplus 2y ago

We’re three decades in with the web and it’s pretty clear that voluntary payment nudges don’t work. Most people won’t pay for free content after they’ve consumed it. Humans need an extra incentive to pay for free content. This is why so many sponsorship platforms are effectively subscription models with additional exclusive content or early access. And for that to work, you need more than just a payment button, you need a content publishing platform that will handle all the subs and content gating.

wat10000 2y ago
I don’t think payment friction has been reduced nearly enough to make that statement. If it was possible to click a button to instantly send ten cents to the creator of an article, and people still didn’t do it, then we could conclude that it doesn’t work. But we’re extremely far from that now.
- Suppafly 2y ago
  This, people want micropayments but the market won't figure out a way to provide a service for that.
etskinner 2y ago
I think you're missing a small yet significant portion of people who will pay for content after consuming it. Off the top of my head I've "tipped" after the fact for: An awesome free work time recording app, "free" walking tours when I'm traveling, free online chess, Wikipedia — all after using them.
- rchaud 2y ago
  Most people won't do that though. The walking tour is an example of a situation where there is likely a societal expectation to tip. No such thing on the internet where the publisher is a faceless unknown.
Suppafly 2y ago
>We’re three decades in with the web and it’s pretty clear that voluntary payment nudges don’t work. Most people won’t pay for free content after they’ve consumed it. Humans have no problem tipping, the issue is that a single article or piece of content is rarely worth than a fractional amount of whatever your preferred currency is, and it costs more than that amount to transfer that currency. Sponsorships work because you pay normal amounts of currency to receive a larger future block of content. To make tipping work, you need a system that supports allowing you to deposit normal sums of money but then dole it out in micropayments, and also not charge more than those payments for processing the micropayments. A payment system like Paypal, that maintains an internal balance that is used instead of just transferring from one bank account to another (zelle, venmo), could handle this but I don't think the financial incentives are there for them to bother with it.

kelvinjps10 2y ago

Sorry, but I don't really see the problem, I mean someone that wants to get paid will make sure to let you know where to pay them.

micropayer 2y ago

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havnagiggle 2y ago

Seems fairly simple to have a smart contract do a DNS validation to unlock funds. For example, someone sends to a contract "$1 to example.com". Then the URL owner publishes either a TXT file or DNS record that has a list of crypto wallet addresses. Contract then forwards the payments. You could even make the keys just the ISO codes for each currency. It's as good of a proof for TLS certs, but it's susceptible to DNS hijacking, etc. Make the contract immutable to meet tornado.cash standard. There are already oracles for DNS lookups so this contract might already exist somewhere. Add in a couple of features: 1. Allow tracking per domain so publishers can know that there is a demand to set it up on their end. 2. Allow refunds in case the publisher never opens it up.

numtel 2y ago
You're very close to https://prove.email/ https://prove.email/

EricRiese 2y ago

Isn't the solution for Patreon et al to offer embeddable widgets that implement the Payments Request API?

mediumsmart 2y ago

You scan the qrcode on the page which will launch your banking app that initiates the transfer and fills out the details leaving for you to enter the amount and the fingerprint confirmation to send it off.

zoezoezoezoe 2y ago

I think the way you support publishers is one of a few things * they list a patreon or librepay or whatever and you support them directly * They have ads and they ask you nicely to disable your adblocker (as long as they are unobtrusive I'm fine with this) I think that's really it, if publishers dont give you a clear way to support them, in my eyes, they are providing the service for free.

rullelito 2y ago
But crypto..
- zoezoezoezoe 2y ago
  if you want to me to send you crypto, put a BTC or, preferably, Monero address in the footer or whatever.

SethMLarson 2y ago

Author here! My primary motivation is to tip the hundreds of web creators that I enjoy every year without linearly increasing my spend (I can only afford so many $3/month Patreons). It's manual for now, but the computer tracks who to pay next, who to stop paying, and give you links to speed up the process. See: https://fosstodon.org/@sethmlarson/113575887792359030 https://fosstodon.org/@sethmlarson/113575887792359030 Happy to answer questions :)

edward 2y ago

It's worth noting that Ted Nelson's visionary Xanadu project had actually addressed this issue decades ago. In the original design of Project Xanadu, rule 9 states "Every document can contain a royalty mechanism at any desired degree of granularity to ensure payment on any portion accessed, including virtual copies ('transclusions') of all or part of the document." This suggests a foresighted approach to content monetisation which the modern web, in many ways an unfinished hypertext prototype, still lacks. Nelson's idea was to embed financial transactions directly into the fabric of document interchange, an integration not yet realised in today's digital content landscape. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu#Original_17_rules https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu#Original_17_rul...

lmm 2y ago
> It's worth noting that Ted Nelson's visionary Xanadu project had actually addressed this issue decades ago. In the original design of Project Xanadu, rule 9 states "Every document can contain a royalty mechanism at any desired degree of granularity to ensure payment on any portion accessed, including virtual copies ('transclusions') of all or part of the document." It's easy to address every possible issue when your project is vaporware and you can just write "royalty mechanism" rather than having to actually implement one.
- stavros 2y ago
  Yeah, wow. Saying that someone addressed the issue by writing "documents can contain a royalty mechanism" is like saying Jules Verne addressed the issue of manned spaceflight.

fjfaase 2y ago

The European Union is working on a standard for QR-code payments [1]. In the Netherlands, most banking app already understand QR-code for payments. There are serviced that offer a possibility to ask for a payment without a specified amount that do not the reveal the bank account of the requester. If this could be turned into a world wide standard, one could add a link to a QR code in a web page to request for donations. One should realize that there are very different payments systems in the world and that there are payment companies, think credit card companies, that have good reasons to resist these kind of global standards. [1] https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/document-library/guidance-documents/standardisation-qr-codes-mscts https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/document-library/guid...

Funes- 2y ago

If they'd fancy a donation, they'd have a visible button or section on their website so anyone interested could send it their way. Liberapay looks like a decent alternative to Patreon. Crypto (XMR, namely) is also a good option.

AlienRobot 2y ago

This could be solved with a simple <link> standard. If we're talking "direct" payments, as much as it pains me to say it, it would be bitcoin, wouldn't it? Just put a wallet address in a <meta> and you're done. But with its operational overhead it may be a waste for micro-transactions compared to traditional payment methods. To be honest, the real problem isn't that there is no way to mark this up, is that even if there WAS a way to mark this up, most people wouldn't because it's not a browser API. People don't even use RSS because browsers don't tell users about RSS links. There needs to be a tangible consequence of using a tag for people to bother with it. If a $ doesn't appear on the address bar, what is the point?

6510 2y ago

This week someone finally vandalized an old long forgotten sign at the train station. It's purpose was to ask the traveler not to walk on the rails. It said because of delays 30 000 people were late for their appointment every year. It attempted to appeal to a kind of decency and care for others that just doesn't exist anymore. It is also true that no one walks on the rails anymore. The answer to the riddle, how to pay the publisher: You make your own website and write your own article(s) If the reward worthy publisher wrote something that fits the context of your website (or one of them) and it is worth reading for your readers you make a link to it. <a href=""> etc An endorsement like that, from the right person, is worth a lot but it is not required. You just make a nice article for other people, they could do the same. We all win or lose together.

pixodaros 2y ago

I'm out of the web dev game but wouldn't you just write code to search for links to the ten or so most popular wrappers for Paypal or Stripe and then an API to perform the transaction? That should cover 99% of the actual payments that happen (there are LiberaPay and crypto schemes and bank transfer and SEPA for nerds). I think that basically all the money that moves to support free webpages is through PayPal or Stripe, maybe a few percent by the EU SEPA and Canadian eTransfer systems. Realistically you Ctrl-F "donate / Paypal / Patreon / support" and click that link. Good web design should make it clear on a screen and in the code what is site content and what is third-party content such as comments with spam links.

bombi 2y ago

[dead]

lofaszvanitt 2y ago

I wrote about a country or worldwide like system before that would do automatic funding to visited webpages: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40972106 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40972106 Would be nice for the EU to implement such a feature.