4 ms·

This seems to focus on online advertising. The question is how would you pay for many things on the internet?

SecretDreams 2y ago
Sign me up for a monthly internet pass. Shit, bake it into my monthly internet access fee and make it so the service providers then pay back into internet infrastructure. Just like we do for radio and TV. I'd love to see the internet become relatively non profit, instead of the current for-profit, for absolutely shit model we are living in.
- thfuran 2y ago
  >I'd love to see the internet become relatively non profit The stocks haven't gone down enough for your liking?
  - SecretDreams 2y ago
    They've gone down mostly for terrible reasons. I could at least accept lower stock prices for a better internet for me and my kids. Much like housing prices, haha.
cpinto 2y ago
How many things on the internet do you really need and that are paid for via advertising?
wood_spirit 2y ago
I remember fondly the early internet which was full of hobby sites and forums and niche link rings. This was an innocent better time where the internet was full of small scale creativity and sharing and mostly kindness.
- sejje 2y ago
  The early internet, which I was a part of, and think of fondly, didn't have anywhere near the utility of the modern internet. It was fun to explore, but you couldn't DO much. I hosted my own site, in my bedroom. I hosted a counter-strike server, too. Comcast hadn't shut hosting down yet. Anyway, that has nothing to do with online banking, services, security, apps, media. Let's just use youtube--one of the greatest sites of all time, hands down. Huge utility, huge entertainment. Free, via advertising. Would have never happened without it. There's so, so much trash, webspam, etc on the modern web. I hate it, too. I don't even have warm feelings about youtube anymore. But advertising opened a lot of doors.
  - bigstrat2003 2y ago
    > Comcast hadn't shut hosting down yet. They still haven't. I host a site from my Comcast connection just fine.
- doctorpangloss 2y ago
  Ha ha, so your answer is, everything that advertising pays for, which is like 99% of the internet usage today, would go away.
SteveNuts 2y ago
There must be a reason someone hasn't invented a browser plugin for microtransactions on the internet? I'll gladly pay 25 cents to read an article from a news website, but I won't subscribe for a whole year for $25+, especially when there's dozens/hundreds of sites. Obviously credit card transaction fees would be a problem, but that could be mitigated by depositing say $15 at a time and deducting from the balance each time.
- renewiltord 2y ago
  This is something I explain too. I’d gladly pay maybe 10 cents for IntelliJ but it’s the Pirate Bay otherwise. Just set the pricing appropriately. It costs $0 to make a copy so it’s an infinite margin. Same with most SaaS. About 20 cents per month should be the maximum. Any more than that is gouging. Hiring engineers is even worse. I think about $20/hr should suffice but there’s this big fuss kicked up about “they’re not willing to pay enough”.
  - SteveNuts 2y ago
    I mean the alternative is they get nothing from me at all once I hit their paywall.. And I don't think ad revenue is paying the bills so I'm not sure what other options there are. I just went to a few major news sites: Wapo: $120/yr Reuters: $45/yr WSJ: $349/yr NYT: $195/yr Bloomberg: $299/yr That's just a few. Is it better if I just choose one and only get my news from a single site? Or should it really cost thousands of dollars per year to be informed?
    - renewiltord 2y ago
      Yeah, that's what I mean, it's either 10 cents or 0 cents, so they should just charge everyone 10 cents to capture the marginal value from me.
- lukev 2y ago
  This is the great white whale of the internet. A platform for this would clearly be a thing of value, but extremely difficult to do because you need to booststrap a two-sided market in an environment where all the existing established players are incentivized NOT to participate.
graemep 2y ago
I am pretty sure that if people had to find away to make things profitable they would. There are plenty of payment mechanisms already used online. IMO it would be well worth paying for things so I am the customer instead of the product. Many things could be replaced. My use of FB could be replaced by forums, for example. I would quite happily pay the bills for old style forums that replace the FB groups I admin (although not the costs imposed by the Online Safety Act, but that is a UK only problem).
thrance 2y ago
We can rely on donations, look at Wikipedia or personal blogs. The best parts of the internet are free and non-profit.

Sign me up for a monthly internet pass. Shit, bake it into my monthly internet access fee and make it so the service providers then pay back into internet infrastructure. Just like we do for radio and TV. I'd love to see the internet become relatively non profit, instead of the current for-profit, for absolutely shit model we are living in.

thfuran 2y ago
>I'd love to see the internet become relatively non profit The stocks haven't gone down enough for your liking?
- SecretDreams 2y ago
  They've gone down mostly for terrible reasons. I could at least accept lower stock prices for a better internet for me and my kids. Much like housing prices, haha.

cpinto 2y ago

How many things on the internet do you really need and that are paid for via advertising?

wood_spirit 2y ago

I remember fondly the early internet which was full of hobby sites and forums and niche link rings. This was an innocent better time where the internet was full of small scale creativity and sharing and mostly kindness.

sejje 2y ago
The early internet, which I was a part of, and think of fondly, didn't have anywhere near the utility of the modern internet. It was fun to explore, but you couldn't DO much. I hosted my own site, in my bedroom. I hosted a counter-strike server, too. Comcast hadn't shut hosting down yet. Anyway, that has nothing to do with online banking, services, security, apps, media. Let's just use youtube--one of the greatest sites of all time, hands down. Huge utility, huge entertainment. Free, via advertising. Would have never happened without it. There's so, so much trash, webspam, etc on the modern web. I hate it, too. I don't even have warm feelings about youtube anymore. But advertising opened a lot of doors.
- bigstrat2003 2y ago
  > Comcast hadn't shut hosting down yet. They still haven't. I host a site from my Comcast connection just fine.
doctorpangloss 2y ago
Ha ha, so your answer is, everything that advertising pays for, which is like 99% of the internet usage today, would go away.

SteveNuts 2y ago

There must be a reason someone hasn't invented a browser plugin for microtransactions on the internet? I'll gladly pay 25 cents to read an article from a news website, but I won't subscribe for a whole year for $25+, especially when there's dozens/hundreds of sites. Obviously credit card transaction fees would be a problem, but that could be mitigated by depositing say $15 at a time and deducting from the balance each time.

renewiltord 2y ago
This is something I explain too. I’d gladly pay maybe 10 cents for IntelliJ but it’s the Pirate Bay otherwise. Just set the pricing appropriately. It costs $0 to make a copy so it’s an infinite margin. Same with most SaaS. About 20 cents per month should be the maximum. Any more than that is gouging. Hiring engineers is even worse. I think about $20/hr should suffice but there’s this big fuss kicked up about “they’re not willing to pay enough”.
- SteveNuts 2y ago
  I mean the alternative is they get nothing from me at all once I hit their paywall.. And I don't think ad revenue is paying the bills so I'm not sure what other options there are. I just went to a few major news sites: Wapo: $120/yr Reuters: $45/yr WSJ: $349/yr NYT: $195/yr Bloomberg: $299/yr That's just a few. Is it better if I just choose one and only get my news from a single site? Or should it really cost thousands of dollars per year to be informed?
  - renewiltord 2y ago
    Yeah, that's what I mean, it's either 10 cents or 0 cents, so they should just charge everyone 10 cents to capture the marginal value from me.
lukev 2y ago
This is the great white whale of the internet. A platform for this would clearly be a thing of value, but extremely difficult to do because you need to booststrap a two-sided market in an environment where all the existing established players are incentivized NOT to participate.

graemep 2y ago

I am pretty sure that if people had to find away to make things profitable they would. There are plenty of payment mechanisms already used online. IMO it would be well worth paying for things so I am the customer instead of the product. Many things could be replaced. My use of FB could be replaced by forums, for example. I would quite happily pay the bills for old style forums that replace the FB groups I admin (although not the costs imposed by the Online Safety Act, but that is a UK only problem).

thrance 2y ago

We can rely on donations, look at Wikipedia or personal blogs. The best parts of the internet are free and non-profit.