100 million dollars to reshape the economics of the web • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by carapace » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 1:22 AM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #18

jsnell wrote: post #2

Halfway through reading this, the site suddenly covered half the screen with a "donate to Mozilla" banner. The case for "reshaping the economics of the web" would have been a bit more compelling without that... (My problem isn't about asking for donations. It's about asking for them in a particularly user-hostile way. If the call to action at the bottom isn't enough, work it into the text.)

Super ironic too, considering they are working on blocking in-page JS popups like this and there's an addon to report them. https://github.com/ehsan/popup-reporter

Also ironic asking for donations on a post about giving away $100,000,000.

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

#122

Post by frogpelt » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 1:29 AM UTC

I wonder if a Spotify for the Internet would work.

Pay a monthly access fee and have micro payments go to the creators based on usage.

Mozilla would be in a good position to introduce that type of service and track consumption.

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

#123

Post by manigandham » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 1:30 AM UTC

meerita wrote: post #112

manigandham wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having ads doesn’t mean the context has no value. Otherwise why are you visiting any site with ads?

Indeed. But ads shouldn't be the reason you write software or write about software development.

Who’s doing that? And nobody needs to tell anyone else why they should or shouldn’t do something. Everyone can make their own way and living.

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

#124

Post by dangrossman » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 1:34 AM UTC

austhrow743 wrote: post #116

dangrossman wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I don't think that distinction is precise enough for this. Sure soap is a necessity, but if you buy some premium fancy soap from P&G that had a lot of marketing budget contributing to its high cost rather than the supermarket brand plain soap, then plenty of that soap money was discretionary.

This extra precision doesn't change anything. None of the proposed alternative monetization schemes have suggested you buy a cheaper brand of soap so that you can put another nickel of discretionary income into tipping websites. Even some of the money you spend on the generic store brand ends up in someone's marketing budget.

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

#125

Post by troydavis » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 1:43 AM UTC

Here's how Coil ended up with $100 million to fund this grant (https://fortune.com/2019/09/16/grant-for-the-web-mozilla-coi...):

> As for the source of the $100 million that will fund the project, Thomas said it came via a grant to Coil from Ripple, and that in some cases, the project will use XRP—the cryptocurrency that is an integral part of Ripple's operations—to settle financial transactions.

… and here's why Ripple made the original (~$265 million USD) grant to Coil (https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ripples-xpring-make...) in August 2019:

> Coil, a platform dedicated to reimagining monetization on the web for creators and their fans, today announced a 1 billion XRP grant from Ripple's Xpring. The money will be deployed towards driving adoption of XRP and the Interledger Protocol (ILP) by growing Coil's monetization platform through mainstream adoption of Web Monetization, an open web standard built on Interledger that enables streaming micropayments in any currency, including XRP.

> …

> The platform enables creators to post public and exclusive content on Coil, which is automatically enabled for streaming payments. Creators can web-monetize their own websites by adding a simple tag. Those who want to support creators using Coil can join the community with a $5 monthly subscription. There are no membership fees for creators.

In May 2018, the first of several lawsuits was filed that allege XRP is a security: https://www.coindesk.com/investors-suing-ripple-cite-sec-gui.... They're seeking class-action status to represent everyone who bought XRP. Matt Levine briefly mentioned Ripple while covering the broader question of how the SEC would classify coins: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-06-15/the-se....

Obviously Ripple is inherently motivated to see XRP adopted, but also, an active micropayment/content payment ecosystem might strengthen their claim that XRP is a utility coin and that their ICO wasn't an unregistered securities offering. Some background on this question: https://www.sec.gov/news/public-statement/statement-clayton-...

Here's what that lawsuit alleges (http://static.coindesk.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/716bee..., as amended Aug 2019):

> Ripple claims that XRP has utility—like currency—in its use as a “bridge currency” for international payments. But, as discussed above, more than 60 percent of XRP is owned by Ripple and none of that XRP is used for anything at all, other than to be sold in the future to investors. Moreover, as for the XRP that was already sold or otherwise distributed by Defendants, the vast majority of it is not used for bridging international transactions, but for investment purpose. Accordingly, Defendants’ claim that XRP has a utilitarian purpose is nothing but a red herring attempt to avoid the application of securities laws.

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

#126

Post by ryacko » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 1:43 AM UTC

205guy wrote: post #86

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.…

My idea was just to have this integrated into your ISP bill. I once thought that ISPs should pay for all content, then pass the bill onto users + costs-and-profit. I guess there would need to be separate standardized rates for video, audio, and text, but that creates a ton of regulatory and technical issues. Not the least of which is people don't want to pay. It would be like music licensing essentially, and look how…

Security issues. Ad fraud is already bad enough.

And small children paying a thousand dollars for an app does reach the news.

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

#127

Post by pjzedalis » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 1:47 AM UTC

Advertising is opt-out. Every idea centered around tipping, micro-transactions, cryptocurrency are opt-in. I don't think most content creators are willing to make that jump.

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

#128

Post by ryacko » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 1:48 AM UTC

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.…

It exists: http://opentransactions.org/wiki/Main_Page

It is, like all crypto currencies, bottlenecked by the issue that it has to be exchanged for hard currency.

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

#129

Post by lonelappde » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 1:49 AM UTC

kjeetgill wrote: post #114

Retric wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively if advertising became significantly less effective companies would spend less money on it. That's the upside of Ad-blocking which could theoretically make a huge impact.

I'm not sure where you got this idea. Ad-blocking might hurt in some future with hypothetically high enough percentages of traffic. Right now they make ads more effective (marginally). By self selection, a population with relatively low click-rates has removed themselves from having any money spent on them. This helps Google and Advertisers since right now, the volume of available impressions is plenty high, the name…

Advertisers converge toward pay per conversion on average, so removing non-converting traffic doesn't affect spend or payouts.

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

#130

Post by udkl » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 1:59 AM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #92

There's nothing new here. Micropayments have been tried countless times. We did it ourselves and came to the same conclusions that people just don't value content highly nor want to pay for it at any sustainable rate. [1] Advertising is faster, easier, more passive, and more egalitarian than direct payments. Many people you might not consider (like billions around the world) are happy to view ads in exchange for free…

Why wouldn't these two approached work in parallel ? An ad-free experience for those willing to pay and an ad supported one for those who don't.

I'm sure there are nuances like the politics you mention in your linked comment. Just curious why.