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Would you pay to subscribe to a service that paid the sites you use instead of them showing you ads?
by ianlevesque 13y ago
Would you pay to subscribe to a service that paid the sites you use instead of them showing you ads?
- JoshTriplett 13y agoNo. Not because I won't pay certain sites for their content (I subscribe to LWN, for instance), but because I don't want to pay some aggregating middleman service that by necessity can then track across all the sites I visit. In principle I like the concept of paying a fixed amount per unit time and splitting that across the sites I care about. In practice I don't see any obvious privacy-respecting way to do that.
- skue 13y agoThat is an excellent point about micropayments. Creating a system that pays sites without a middleman that tracks visits would be challenging (though I imagine it's technically feasible).
- skue 13y agoSure, I was always intrigued by the micro payments idea. Heck, if that we're the norm I wonder if it wouldn't promote better web content. I'd be more likely to spend more time on sites I wanted to support than the sensational sites I may feel guilty about having clicked through to. But I don't think most folks think this way, so practically speaking I don't see micropayments ever working. Would love to be proven wrong.