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

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

#181

Post by simula67 » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 7:49 AM UTC

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…

> [all consumers' discretionary income they'd be willing to spend] is likely a small fraction of the size of [all commercial companies' marketing budgets]

Assuming you meant all spending, this cannot be true, because all marketing budgets are paid out of people's spending. You are paying for advertisements, they are included in prices of goods and services you buy.

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

#182

Post by Vinnl » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 7:55 AM UTC

yoz-y wrote: post #158

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.)

I find this weird. I believe most people who donate to mozilla want to do it to keep the lights on for the browser development. Now they are simultaneously asking for donations and giving 100 mil away. Non profits donating money to other causes seems wrong to me, I think it would be better if they offered an option Humble Bundle-style to split the money and let the donors choose

> Funded and led by Coil

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

#183

Post by Freak_NL » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 7:59 AM UTC

simula67 wrote: post #181

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…

> [all consumers' discretionary income they'd be willing to spend] is likely a small fraction of the size of [all commercial companies' marketing budgets] Assuming you meant all spending, this cannot be true, because all marketing budgets are paid out of people's spending. You are paying for advertisements, they are included in prices of goods and services you buy.

It can be true if people spend more than they think they are willing to spend on content via advertisements. That is, people underestimate how much advertisements affect them. And of course there are people who simply block advertisements.

Either that, or advertisers overestimate the impact of online advertising.

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

#184

Post by rswail » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 8:07 AM UTC

sgc wrote: post #88

cameronbrown wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why spreading £10 over thousands of websites is much easier to sell than £0.01 per article. With the later model people become paralised with choice, and the former model has been successful as the backbone for SMS/data infrastructure almost everywhere.

It would be nice if there were a reciprocal subscription model. All subscribers to the NYT can also view articles of the LA Times or some other site, but reciprocal logins are tracked and funds are divided accordingly. That way, with some limits, each site could set their price, offer the bonus of visiting other sites, and there would not be the huge barrier to entry of requiring a massive player to aggregate things…

It's also the model of internet peering, but it requires an even exchange otherwise the imbalances lead to failure.

As an example, the current dispute where the US is leaving the Universal Postal Union (a month from today) because the exchange is unbalanced due to e-commerce from/to China.

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

#185

Post by elcritch » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 8:11 AM UTC

d0gbread wrote: post #109

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.…

Brave is doing exactly this with BAT on Ethereum but automating the whole thing. You can donate to any website, but you'll also auto-contribute if you choose to have that enabled.

I wish brave would just go for a plug-in approach, and partner with some news sites.

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

#186

Post by baud147258 » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 8:12 AM UTC

Couldn't have they used that money to make Firefox consume less battery on mobile? At least on par with Chrome?

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

#187

Post by dylkil » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 8:14 AM UTC

uncletammy wrote: post #67

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.

>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

A large part of the BTC community forked Bitcoin Cash from Bitcoin and removed the artificial limits imposed on it.

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

#188

Post by elcritch » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 8:17 AM UTC

vkou wrote: post #79

xur17 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give a few examples?

https://contributor.google.com/v/beta The gp post is correct. When given the option between an ad, adblock, or tipping, people overwhelmingly choose option #1 or #2. They then complain about ads, if they chose #1, and about adblock naggers, if they chose #2. And, of course, all three sets of people lose their mind when they run into a paywall. There is no non-legislative solution to this problem.

Simple, paywall but provide an option to pay a reasonable price for an article, say $0.25 instead of tipping or ads. Of course NYT and all want a sleezy $5 subscription that’ll balloon to $30/mo in three months.

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

#189

Post by Sabinus » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 8:26 AM UTC

z3t4 wrote: post #51

Here I thought Mozilla had made it possible to do micro transactions in the browser. That Mozilla had started a bank backed by 100 million in Bitcoin, allowing zero-fee off-chain transactions between content creators and consumers.

Imagine.

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

#190

Post by jfim » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 8:41 AM UTC

galaxyLogic wrote: post #164

sebastos wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all just spending though. Tide is trying to get you to pay a little extra for the name brand over the generic. Instead of a Toyota SUV you could have picked up a used beater - or kept driving the car you have for a few more thousand miles. Netflix wants you to shell out extra "discretionary" money to watch some TV shows you don't need to see. And millions of people do it, because they want to. If it cost money t…

I think on demand TV works great, you want to watch a movie hit the remote and the cost will be part of your monthly bill. If something similar existed for the web it would be great

It's highly dependent on implementation. It's too much mental load to determine if that article you just read is worth $0.02 or not.

Brave has a model where creators are automatically tipped, based on usage, which makes more sense imo.