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We should revive the micro payments feature that where built into very early browsers. It didn’t catch on back then. But time are changing.

Kye 3mo ago
I don't remember that, though I only started with early Netscape. Do you have more detail?
- ihateolives 3mo ago
  It wasn't in Mosaic either so I have no idea where they took that fact from.
- c16 3mo ago
  pretty sure the guy from TPB had a micro-payments/donation startup around the time when everyone was using Facebook like buttons on their websites.
  - Kye 3mo ago
    That was a decade after anything I would think of as early browsers, much less very early browsers.
LukaD 3mo ago
> We should revive the micro payments feature that where built into very early browsers. I don't think this was ever a thing. I know there's HTTP 402 and before 2000 there were some standards around payment being pursued but AFAIK nothing ever made it into browsers. Or am I missing something?
Itoldmyselfso 3mo ago
Paywalling with extremely easy, one-click payment of very small amount might work. Paywalling does still incentivize things like misleading, sensationalized click-bait titles, but that's pretty much the norm everywhere. Alternatively, if there was a subscription that covered a massive amount of blogs/news bundled into one low-cost subscription, that might also work. What I heavily doubt is if donation-based micropayments will ever find enough users to remain profitable.
- neodymiumphish 3mo ago
  Not donation-based. If you have a wallet configured to pay a microtransaction for each day you browse to a certain site (of for x # of page loads, although that could incentivize strange web site behavior to increase the number of pages a reader goes to while they visit), then your wallet pays the small payment when you first browse to the page and you get an ad-free experience. Otherwise, ads or a subscription paywall, depending on how the site wants to manage revenue.
- WillAdams 3mo ago
  Well, Ted Nelson wanted that w/ Xanadu and Autodesk spent a fair bit of money on that....
carlosjobim 3mo ago
It has never worked and will never work. What has been proven to work is syndication, ie putting a giant amount of content behind a single paywall. Like Spotify, Netflix, Cable TV, other streamers do. Text publishers could easily do that if they wanted to. But it needs to be extremely broad, and not decided by ideological leanings or snobbery and such.
- azertify 3mo ago
  I can see Substack attempting this, and being opt-in for publishers. But I can't imagine this being good for independent publishers.
shawnwall 3mo ago
I believe that was an intent/goal of BAT in Brave.
- bigfishrunning 3mo ago
  And it was a fine goal, but BAT did so many shady things (like blocking ads but then showing brave's own ads), and the PR poison that is anything cryptocurrency, meant that it was ultimately doomed to fail.

Kye 3mo ago

I don't remember that, though I only started with early Netscape. Do you have more detail?

ihateolives 3mo ago
It wasn't in Mosaic either so I have no idea where they took that fact from.
c16 3mo ago
pretty sure the guy from TPB had a micro-payments/donation startup around the time when everyone was using Facebook like buttons on their websites.
- Kye 3mo ago
  That was a decade after anything I would think of as early browsers, much less very early browsers.

LukaD 3mo ago

> We should revive the micro payments feature that where built into very early browsers. I don't think this was ever a thing. I know there's HTTP 402 and before 2000 there were some standards around payment being pursued but AFAIK nothing ever made it into browsers. Or am I missing something?

Itoldmyselfso 3mo ago

Paywalling with extremely easy, one-click payment of very small amount might work. Paywalling does still incentivize things like misleading, sensationalized click-bait titles, but that's pretty much the norm everywhere. Alternatively, if there was a subscription that covered a massive amount of blogs/news bundled into one low-cost subscription, that might also work. What I heavily doubt is if donation-based micropayments will ever find enough users to remain profitable.

neodymiumphish 3mo ago
Not donation-based. If you have a wallet configured to pay a microtransaction for each day you browse to a certain site (of for x # of page loads, although that could incentivize strange web site behavior to increase the number of pages a reader goes to while they visit), then your wallet pays the small payment when you first browse to the page and you get an ad-free experience. Otherwise, ads or a subscription paywall, depending on how the site wants to manage revenue.
WillAdams 3mo ago
Well, Ted Nelson wanted that w/ Xanadu and Autodesk spent a fair bit of money on that....

carlosjobim 3mo ago

It has never worked and will never work. What has been proven to work is syndication, ie putting a giant amount of content behind a single paywall. Like Spotify, Netflix, Cable TV, other streamers do. Text publishers could easily do that if they wanted to. But it needs to be extremely broad, and not decided by ideological leanings or snobbery and such.

azertify 3mo ago
I can see Substack attempting this, and being opt-in for publishers. But I can't imagine this being good for independent publishers.

shawnwall 3mo ago

I believe that was an intent/goal of BAT in Brave.

bigfishrunning 3mo ago
And it was a fine goal, but BAT did so many shady things (like blocking ads but then showing brave's own ads), and the PR poison that is anything cryptocurrency, meant that it was ultimately doomed to fail.