Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

100 million dollars to reshape the economics of the web

foundation.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 277 posts

Re: 100 million dollars to reshape the economics of the web

#61

Post by jedimastert »

FreeHugs wrote: post #3

It's crazy, that we still do not have something like "Cash" on the internet. A simple, anonymous way to pay 10 cent or so. To use a website or read an article. That would make the world so much better for indie developers. Currently, an indie dev makes orders of magnitude less money per pageview then Google, Facebook and Co. Because those have all that advertising technology and ecosystem that indie devs don't have.…

> Currently, an indie dev makes orders of magnitude less money per pageview then Google, Facebook and Co. Because those have all that advertising technology and ecosystem that indie devs don't have.

If you're referring to the cut AdSense takes out of ad revenue, it's about 30%

Re: 100 million dollars to reshape the economics of the web

#62

Post by kbuchanan »

dangrossman wrote: post #32

None of these web monetization efforts address the fact that the pool of [all consumers' discretionary income they'd be willing to spend] is likely a small fraction of the size of [all commercial companies' marketing budgets]. No matter how much you reduce the friction for having people make small tips to websites, there's just significantly less money to go around, so it can never replace advertising revenue. The on…

Adding to this, in the same way that privacy specialists struggle to convince the public of the supreme importance of security and privacy, it's difficult for superusers to appreciate the general public's feelings about the trade-offs of advertising—in other words, the general public might never care.

(Mozilla's campaign is a form of activism by superusers, for superusers.)

Re: 100 million dollars to reshape the economics of the web

#63

Post by dangrossman »

gumby wrote: post #58
dangrossman wrote: post #32

None of these web monetization efforts address the fact that the pool of [all consumers' discretionary income they'd be willing to spend] is likely a small fraction of the size of [all commercial companies' marketing budgets]. No matter how much you reduce the friction for having people make small tips to websites, there's just significantly less money to go around, so it can never replace advertising revenue. The on…

> the fact that the pool of [all consumers' discretionary income they'd be willing to spend] is likely a small fraction of the size of [all commercial companies' marketing budgets]. I don't understand this statement. The companies marketing to people with discretionary income presumably get their revenues from that discretionary income. So mathematically their marketing budget would have to be smaller than the revenu…

> presumably get their revenues from that discretionary income

This is where you made a mistake. Their revenues comes from spending on necessities, not from discretionary income. Proctor & Gamble's $7 billion a year in advertising is coming from our buying soap and laundry detergent and toilet paper, not what you have left over for movie tickets. The $30 billion a year in medical marketing is coming from insulin and blood pressure pills, not your Netflix subscription. Most consumer spending is on necessities (food, housing, car payment, health/auto/home insurance, mortgage interest, fuel, etc) and those companies do the bulk of the advertising. People cannot choose to spend that money tipping websites instead unless they stop eating, stop taking medication, etc.

Re: 100 million dollars to reshape the economics of the web

#64

Post by snthd »

FreeHugs wrote: post #3

It's crazy, that we still do not have something like "Cash" on the internet. A simple, anonymous way to pay 10 cent or so. To use a website or read an article. That would make the world so much better for indie developers. Currently, an indie dev makes orders of magnitude less money per pageview then Google, Facebook and Co. Because those have all that advertising technology and ecosystem that indie devs don't have.…

GNU Taler is a WIP for that.

https://taler.net

Re: 100 million dollars to reshape the economics of the web

#65

Post by peterwwillis »

So, if I read this right, they want privacy-focused tech hipsters to vie for $20M a year to create open source fintech startups that will beat global banks and payment companies on transfer fees while simultaneously improving all social classes' access to the internet.

Here's my solution: chargebacks. You surf a site, and see a preview of some content. To get the full content, you click "buy", and the site communicates with your own preferred online payment processor (OPP) to confirm a payment. The OPP checks your balance and replies if you have the balance requested, and the site then serves up your content. At the end of the month the OPP settles up with each site for what's owed. If you want to get fancy you can implement a whole rules engine so each site can set up subscriptions for users so users can limit how much each site can charge them. You support multiple subscription models so users can pay by a monthly contract or per-click. If everyone keeps their money in the OPPs (ala Paypal) the OPPs end up making tons of money by investing the balance that hasn't been transferred out yet.

Once this is implemented, Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft will become the default OPP, because they still control all the platforms. Hooray open standards.

Re: 100 million dollars to reshape the economics of the web

#66

Post by JoshTriplett »

Kiro wrote: post #15

I liked Coinhive but despised that 99% used it for malevolent things. I do like the idea of letting my computer do some proof of work for a few seconds to unlock an article. It's like doing a micro payment with your electricity bill, anonymously and without any setup.

In any world in which work that a browser can do in a few seconds will make any appreciable amount of money, someone can make more money by throwing a server or GPU or dedicated hardware at it, and the browser's few seconds of work stops having value.

Re: 100 million dollars to reshape the economics of the web

#67

Post by uncletammy »

FreeHugs wrote: post #3

It's crazy, that we still do not have something like "Cash" on the internet. A simple, anonymous way to pay 10 cent or so. To use a website or read an article. That would make the world so much better for indie developers. Currently, an indie dev makes orders of magnitude less money per pageview then Google, Facebook and Co. Because those have all that advertising technology and ecosystem that indie devs don't have.…

The answer to this was meant to be Bitcoin, hence the title of the whitepaper "Bitcoin: A peer to peer electronic cash system". Unfortunately there is a lot of money being spent to keep that goal from being realized.

If you really want to see "cash on the internet" I would advise you to do some research and find the cryptocurrency that best resembles it, then help build it. It will be an uphill battle the whole way.

Re: 100 million dollars to reshape the economics of the web

#68

Post by zem »

sp332 wrote: post #23
maerF0x0 wrote: post #9

I used to use flattr and thought the concept was sound. Until I saw that most of the creators I wanted to sponsor never bothered to sign up and collect their money. Anyone else have experience with flattr or similar alternatives? I figure with all the "block chain" interest we'd have seen something built on a cryptocurrency allowing "direct" microdonations to a website's "wallet" EDIT: looks like coil is kinda of lik…

Readability tried something like this. Readers liked it a lot more than publishers did. https://web.archive.org/web/20120702145822/http://blog.reada... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4105891

this comment was telling:

Keith Calder June 13, 2012 • 10:41 am

I considered signing up for the Readability Publisher Program. Then I read the Terms of Service (amusingly I just read it yesterday, so this is all fresh in my mind). There is no way in hell I could agree to those terms. It basically gives Readability the right to do whatever they want with my content (which they were already doing, even without my permission) and I would have to limit any liability Readability might have for doing whatever they want with my content.

Some gems from the Readability Publisher Program Terms of Service.

You shall not “modify, translate, or otherwise create derivative works of any part of the Readability Service”

You know, the exact thing Readability does with my content. Or are we pretending that Readlists aren’t a derivative work?

“You agree to hold Readability, its directors, officers and employees, harmless, including costs and attorneys’ fees, from any claim of copyright infringement or intellectual property misappropriation related to ANY WEB pages or articles sent THROUGH or processed through the Readability Service, the Readability website (readability.com) or through the Readability API.”

So basically if I sign up to collect money from Readability, I have to hold them harmless for ANY copyright infringement on ANY web page or article I have authored that is sent through the Readability Service. So if I wrote an article that is behind a pay-wall, and someone figures out a way to add that to a ReadList… Oh well. Nothing I can do about that, unless Readability decides to be nice to me and remove the article. But they’re under no obligation to do that. They could just choose to let people freely redistribute my content against my wishes because I signed up for their Publisher Program to collect money they decided to collect on my behalf.

And just to add insult to injury…

“The Readability Service are protected by copyright, trademark, and other laws of both the United States and foreign countries. Nothing in the Terms gives you a right to use the Readability name or any of the Readability trademarks, logos, domain names, and other distinctive brand features.”

Nice to know that Readability is protected by copyright and trademark laws that apparently don’t protect any of my content.

So yeah. Good riddance to the Readability “publisher payment plan.” I look forward to the other exciting ways Readability will help great content flourish online.

Re: 100 million dollars to reshape the economics of the web

#69

Post by dvt »

Having worked in ad-tech for much of the past decade, I don't really like the idea of ads, but the reality is that advertising is much too effective to simply "go away." The article also conflates "advertising" with "data mining" -- the former is relatively benign; the latter not so much. The effectiveness of Facebook and Google ads are mainly due to (for the most part) information that was voluntarily handed over (likes, search history, etc.), not some evil rootkit.

And even though it sounds like a lot, 100 million dollars is a drop in the bucket. Consider that the top YouTubers make around ~$20M a year (this money comes largely via advertising). So your fund would barely cover the top 5. Also, the idea of lowering "the administrative costs of receiving payment for web content" seems kind at odds with a bureaucratic "Advisory Council initially made up of representatives from Coil, Mozilla, and Creative Commons."

I dunno', to me it just seems like posturing. No real solution offered, just some wishy-washy "feel good" proposals. At least Brave (which is my daily driver) took a hard stance against ads and blocks just about everything, while Mozilla just talks a good game[1].

[1] https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/11658588961766604...

Re: 100 million dollars to reshape the economics of the web

#70

Post by xur17 »

UncleMeat wrote: post #56
FreeHugs wrote: post #3

It's crazy, that we still do not have something like "Cash" on the internet. A simple, anonymous way to pay 10 cent or so. To use a website or read an article. That would make the world so much better for indie developers. Currently, an indie dev makes orders of magnitude less money per pageview then Google, Facebook and Co. Because those have all that advertising technology and ecosystem that indie devs don't have.…

There's been dozens of these products. Some have even been supported by Google, Facebook, and Co. Nobody uses them.

Can you give a few examples?
Post reply on HN