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Exploring alternative funding models for the web

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Exploring alternative funding models for the web

#71

Post by metildaa »

lone_haxx0r wrote: post #69
jerrac wrote: post #4

For a long time I've thought that we need a browser based universal tip jar. Some way that lets me read a blog post, and then tip the site with however much I want. 1 cent, 25 cents, 1 dollar, 200 dollars, any amount. From my understanding of things, the biggest thing in the way is that processing payments costs money. The second thing is making sure the money goes where it is supposed to. With services like Scroll,…

I wouldn't trust Mozilla with such a thing. Actually, I wouldn't trust any silicon valley corporation. I predict that Mozilla would ban wrong-thinkers from their service using the excuse of hate speech. Want to donate to a progressive/leftist organization? Mozilla will gladly help you. Want to donate to a right wing conservative? Mozilla doesn't allow "bigots" on their platform. They did exaxtly that with the Dissent…

Advocating for assaulting and murdering fellow people in your country will result in Visa, Mastercard, American Express & Discover pulling the plug on your merchant account.

All the payments networks have morals clauses in their payments contracts, InfoWars blatantly violated said contract and has kicked up a fit over First Data doing what they are contractually obligated to do.

Some of the frontends like First Data can be very restricitive with their own morals clauses, banning bars, sex shops, book stores, and various other "wrong think". Bitcoin and other schemes will never have a reliable connection to the USA's current payments system due to this type of embedded moralizing.

Re: Exploring alternative funding models for the web

#73

Post by jonahhorowitz »

Google Contributor already solved this problem in a way that every site that runs ads can handle without having to opt-in to an alternative payment universe. Of course, Google shut down Contributor, but if anyone has the ability to reimplement it on a large scale it's probably Firefox (or Microsoft, or Apple I guess).

It's pretty straightforward. You bid on ads on the user's behalf, and you show them cat pictures - or nothing, user's choice. The ad revenue still goes to the website and the user doesn't have to see ads. Everyone gets what they want and this is really important sites don't have to opt-in.

I've run large internet sites and we'd get email into our webmaster@ address saying we'd be tipped by some users and if we went to sign up we could claim our $3.35 or something. Nobody got time for that. Just use the existing payment rails (the ad system).

If over time the sites saw more people using this, they might change their business model to support subscriptions or something and cut the exchanges out of the middle, but to start, this would work.

I hate how everyone wants to reinvent the wheel. looking at you Brave. We don't need cryptocurrency to solve this.

Re: Exploring alternative funding models for the web

#74

Post by jerrac »

xorcist wrote: post #55
jerrac wrote: post #4

For a long time I've thought that we need a browser based universal tip jar. Some way that lets me read a blog post, and then tip the site with however much I want. 1 cent, 25 cents, 1 dollar, 200 dollars, any amount. From my understanding of things, the biggest thing in the way is that processing payments costs money. The second thing is making sure the money goes where it is supposed to. With services like Scroll,…

The biggest obstacle is likely that you need to be a licenses money transmitter in all major jurisdictions to carry out what you describe. The second you let an American tip an Iranian there will be trouble somewhere. It's not an unsolvable problem but you probably need to limit the scope a bit. There's a lot of implementation details hiding behind "accessing the tips they've received". I believe Flattr started out l…

Agreed, that is a large issue. You likely would need to limit by geographical region for a while.

Re: Exploring alternative funding models for the web

#75

Post by jerrac »

jboynyc wrote: post #46
hiccuphippo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens with the tips sent to a website that doesn't register with Mozilla? Maybe there should be a standard meta tag that websites can add to show they are looking for tips. And then they can even add a URL on the tag so they can use another provider if for some reason they don't want Mozilla to be the gatekeeper of their tip jar. But then again, they can just add the link in the website itself like they alread…

Beaker Browser has (a version of) this feature -- you can specify a donate link for your dat site, and the browser then displays a heart button that takes you to that page.

Never heard of Beaker before. A quick skim of their site makes me interested. Thanks for sharing about it. :)

Re: Exploring alternative funding models for the web

#76

Post by Iv »

brycehamrick wrote: post #63

I've come to the conclusion that advertising is the only viable monetization model for most content businesses. This is not a new phenomenon, this is the same reason advertising is dominated television (even paid cable channels), print media like newspapers and magazines, and even in sports. The economics of it are pretty straightforward—customers simply don't value most content at what it costs to produce it. I do a…

I like the proposal of a mandatory subscription: People who pay for internet access would also have to include a 10% donation, split between the content producers of their choice.

This is imperfect, but much better than the current broken system.

Re: Exploring alternative funding models for the web

#77

Post by amirhirsch »

packet_nerd wrote: post #42
jerrac wrote: post #4

For a long time I've thought that we need a browser based universal tip jar. Some way that lets me read a blog post, and then tip the site with however much I want. 1 cent, 25 cents, 1 dollar, 200 dollars, any amount. From my understanding of things, the biggest thing in the way is that processing payments costs money. The second thing is making sure the money goes where it is supposed to. With services like Scroll,…

> browser based universal tip jar I like this idea, and would use it myself. I understand the Brave browser does this, essentially, and have been meaning to check it out. I wonder if a "tip" would be a better system for verifying a real human than Google's captcha (which really goes nuts if you've taken steps to protect your privacy)?

I work on hCaptcha which is essentially what you describe. Customers pay us for data annotation and we pay out to websites for human provided labels while also providing bot detection.

Re: Exploring alternative funding models for the web

#78

Post by kaycebasques »

giaour wrote: post #44
jerrac wrote: post #4

For a long time I've thought that we need a browser based universal tip jar. Some way that lets me read a blog post, and then tip the site with however much I want. 1 cent, 25 cents, 1 dollar, 200 dollars, any amount. From my understanding of things, the biggest thing in the way is that processing payments costs money. The second thing is making sure the money goes where it is supposed to. With services like Scroll,…

Didn't Google try to do this a few years ago? IIRC, they had a service where you could put in a set amount of money a month, and Google would essentially use it to buy the ad slots on pages you visited. Bit of a conflict of interest since Google was also selling the ad slots at non-fixed costs, but it was a nice idea.

Any one got a link on this? Or remember the name?

Edit: Contributor [1] seems to have been its name.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20340453

Re: Exploring alternative funding models for the web

#79

Post by nfoz »

The web doesn't need a funding model.

Many content providers want a funding model for their work. That's fine. Nothing to do with the web, specifically.

IMO the web technology is and should be totally orthogonal to the needs of some businesses that happen to want to use it.

The web should be a mechanism for people to publish documents. That's it. And that's great. In fact we should be making it easier for normal humans to do this. The web had lots of excellent content long before anyone expected they would profit directly from eyeballs on their web-content.

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