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

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

#241

Post by mcv » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 3:14 PM UTC

jamesrcole wrote: post #240

mcv wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of websites already have no ads. Wikipedia, for example. Many blogs too. But even with ads, you'll still be listed. But ad-free sites get a higher ranking, making that a more viable decision for some.

That doesn't matter unless the existing pool of ad-free sites can supply good results for a reasonable proportion of the actual web searches being performed. I doubt very much it can. For the idea to work it'd mean that there'd b incentive to have a website on a particular topic be ad-free vs ad-based competitors. How does that incentive start in the first place?

It probably shouldn't put all ad-free sites above all ad-laden sites, but some preferential treatment would be nice. But there are already plenty of ad-free sites that have tons of useful information. I wouldn't mind seeing them ranked higher.

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

#242

Post by Ajedi32 » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 3:21 PM UTC

jfim wrote: post #190

galaxyLogic wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The main issue with Brave's funding model is that it relies on consumer goodwill. While people might be willing to spend $0.02 to read a news article, they're less likely to allocate $10/month to funding online content creators "just because". There has to be some sort of incentive for most people to spend their money; if they can get the same experience for free, only a small minority will ever bother to pay.

So the question is, how do you provide consumers with such an incentive without charging for the content itself (as that can be problematic for the reason you mentioned), without offering "an ad-free experience" for paid users (as Brave blocks ads by default regardless of whether users pay or not), and without requiring users to incur the mental load of trying to decide whether the paid experience is worth it over the free one?

A difficult problem to say the least.

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

#243

Post by mrlala » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 3:26 PM 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.…

I'm not going to pay for every stupid little thing I do on the internet. And I'm sure there have been attempts at stuff like this, but who really wants this?

I can see it now.. every link I click on here or reddit I have to pay $0.05 to read. Yeah, no thanks. Suddenly the most upvoted things will be ones that people promote to make money on etc.

I already have to pay for every damn thing when I leave my house.. when I'm at my house browsing the internet I would really like to not have to constantly be mindfucked with small purchases every moment.

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

#244

Post by qnsi » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 3:27 PM UTC

baud147258 wrote: post #186

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

Funded by coil

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

#245

Post by qnsi » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 3:30 PM UTC

hartator wrote: post #34

Isn't Mozilla already a non-profit to build a better browser? Shouldn't they focus on that or reduce in-browser ads if they have too much cash?

This is funded by Coil not Mozilla

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

#246

Post by arcturus17 » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 3:39 PM UTC

mrlala wrote: post #243

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.…

I'm not going to pay for every stupid little thing I do on the internet. And I'm sure there have been attempts at stuff like this, but who really wants this? I can see it now.. every link I click on here or reddit I have to pay $0.05 to read. Yeah, no thanks. Suddenly the most upvoted things will be ones that people promote to make money on etc. I already have to pay for every damn thing when I leave my house.. when…

I don't know if I would mind so much donating, say, $20 / month worth of microtransactions to content I really enjoy...

The problem would be the friction of deciding what I reward and what I don't. I don't want to make 200 decisions like that every month in my day to day browsing.

If you bundle it, then it's basically just a subscription (I already pay for, say, the Atlantic).

If you let an algorithm decide for you, then it probably becomes a shitshow.

Maybe there's a genius idea to solve this massive UX problem but I certainly don't see it.

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

#247

Post by mrlala » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 3:46 PM UTC

arcturus17 wrote: post #246

mrlala wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not going to pay for every stupid little thing I do on the internet. And I'm sure there have been attempts at stuff like this, but who really wants this? I can see it now.. every link I click on here or reddit I have to pay $0.05 to read. Yeah, no thanks. Suddenly the most upvoted things will be ones that people promote to make money on etc. I already have to pay for every damn thing when I leave my house.. when…

I don't know if I would mind so much donating, say, $20 / month worth of microtransactions to content I really enjoy... The problem would be the friction of deciding what I reward and what I don't. I don't want to make 200 decisions like that every month in my day to day browsing. If you bundle it, then it's basically just a subscription (I already pay for, say, the Atlantic). If you let an algorithm decide for you,…

>The problem would be the friction of deciding what I reward and what I don't. I don't want to make 200 decisions like that every month in my day to day browsing.

Yeah that is exactly the problem. It would be like having an ala-carte TV cable where you were charged every time you turned on the TV to watch a certain show. I just wouldn't do it.

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

#248

Post by wutbrodo » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 3:53 PM UTC

toast0 wrote: post #12

greycrasan wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately the service that is free will always be more popular and ultimately win over more users. People have decided that paying with their privacy is better for them. I really wish paying 10 cents to use the service was the norm, but alas I doubt it will ever happen.

I suspect you're right that people will strongly prefer free over paid, but it's hard to know how many people would pay ten cents for something, because it's not feasible to charge that little. Paypal has a micropayment rate of 5% + five cents (USD), which means if you charge ten cents, you get maybe $0.0045. Plus, you have to do all the billing infrastructure etc. The economics would be better with a stored balance…

> Paypal has a micropayment rate of 5% + five cents (USD), which means if you charge ten cents, you get maybe $0.0045.

You're off by a factor of ten here, it would be 4.5 cents, not half a cent.

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

#249

Post by C4stor » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 3:53 PM UTC

danShumway wrote: post #154

dangrossman wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what you're missing is that discretionary spending is not all spending, and marketing budgets are a percentage of all spending. When I go to CNN.com right now, I see ads for Tide pods and Toyota SUVs. That ad spend came from our supermarket and car payments, which you can't redirect to tipping websites unless you want to stop eating and driving to work. My argument is basically that no web monetization plan t…

General shoutout to anyone who's less lazy than me: has there been any good research on whether or not advertising increases discretionary spending, and if so by how much? The Tide example here makes me feel a little bit weird, because Tide pods in particular are a pretty bad deal for laundry detergent. If people are buying Tide pods instead of generic laundry detergent, it seems to me that the advertising isn't just…

A lot of advertising is not meant to increase discretionary spending, but to make you pick product A over product B when the moment comes to choose over alternatives.

At the very basic level of it, advertising is giving out the information that your product exists, because otherwise, nobody would even know its existence.

Your example for Apple is very good, it's very highly probable that some persons only switch to newer iPhones when they hear the news it exists and see the keynotes/articles about it, even though there is nothing wrong with their phone, and they may not be thinking about changing it.

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

#250

Post by C4stor » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 3:59 PM UTC

dangrossman wrote: post #236

simula67 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [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.

I can't forego buying food and housing and medication so that I can reallocate "what I pay for advertisements" to tipping websites. If there's less advertising inventory available on websites, P&G is going to reallocate that spend to some other form of advertising, they're not going to drop the price of the shampoo and toilet paper I buy from them. The money's not in my pocket to spend, it's in theirs.

You can reallocate. Only top tier brands use ads, and the price of the advertising is part of the premium you pay for the brand name. For a lot of products, there's no functional difference with their cheaper alternatives.

So, this brand premium is in fact discretionary spending that you could reallocate.