141–147 of 147 posts
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My bank sends me a 1099 when I earn $0.14 of interest on my checking account. There is no reason this hypothetical crypto company couldn't do the same.
Wow. HN really has no clue. 26k karma dude thinks Bitcoin is a company.
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How do you know what is "one good article" and what isn't until you actually read it? There is already an increasing problem with clickbait as sites have to fight for eyeballs to get ad revenue. Making online journalism microtransaction based will completely kill whatever is left of the industry.
The "medium" model could be one way around this. The first 10% or so of the article is visible, after that you need to sign in. Or in this case, pay.
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This is probably a use-case for crypto currency I could actually support... except the gas fees make it worse than the MC/Visa rails
It wouldn’t even need crypto, you just need a company with a ledger that has some big partners in news and entertainment. Apple could do it with their existing Apple Pay system. It makes me think the real difficulty might be regulatory.
The whole point of decentralization is to stop centralized power from abusing their ledgers. Yes crypto is a record of transactions (a ledger) and yes any single company can provide the same service by “simply” recording transactions in a digital ledger, but then you end up with exactly the situation we’re in: companies devaluing balances or making them expire (air miles), companies freezing accounts to save themselves (paypal), and all sorts of other feckery.
At their best, regulations stop the outright theft that companies are capable of (let’s not talk about the worst of regulations). The point is that any central authority can and will use their position to further their own profit margins at the cost of their “customers”.
I’m still waiting for micro transactions. I won’t pay $5 a month for a newspaper I might read one article from but I would gladly pay 25 cents for that one good article. How are there still minimum amounts and fees on transactions when everything is supposedly digitized and networked?
This is probably a use-case for crypto currency I could actually support... except the gas fees make it worse than the MC/Visa rails
> Paywalls offend me. The Internet exists to share knowledge with everyone across the world. You shouldn’t need a subscription, all you should need is an internet connection to access the world’s knowledge. Cool. So remind me how anyone can survive creating high quality content online? Ads? Nope. Privacy nightmare. Subscriptions? Nope. "Offensive". What next? Tips? Please. We already know most people won't pay for co…
Ads don't have to be a privacy nightmare, e.g., highway billboards and broadcast TV. Why can't we have privacy preserving ads on the Web?
The only way you'll get what you're describing is via government regulation.
[1]: There's actually a much much longer-winded answer that gets into the complexities of advertising across hundreds of millions of small publishers that is too much to cover here. Honestly, you could probably write a book about the topic (and odds are someone already has).
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Yeah, it's a problem. I suppose badly implemented paywalls that tech savvy people can get around but others can't is almost worse... I think we should keep searching for solutions. I'm not a huge fan of advertising, but I also don't think they have to be a privacy nightmare. I don't think there's actually strong evidence that intimately targeted advertising works significantly better than simple context-based adverti…
> So maybe non-invasive advertising could work quite well? You'll never get that without government intervention. At a bare minimum, ignoring targeting, tracking to enable conversion analysis--which necessarily requires deanonymizing users and connecting advertising engagements with purchases--is nirvana for advertisers and they'll never want to give that up without a fight. And that's ignoring the fact that users in…
The number of people using and blockers is still quite low, not nearly critical mass. The "conversion analysis" stuff is mostly pseudoscience. Most companies just don't know what to do with the mountain of data they have access to. Data collection is just an addiction at this point.
But the more important thing is the "why". The library has very limited information. Sharing of information, having a voice and engagement in the conversation are all essential to the growth of mankind. Our ideas evolve as a species by including everyone, sharing honestly, increasing access to quality information and standing on the shoulders of giants.
If you believe that preserving people's ability to make money in a free market is more important than that, I really have nothing further to say to you.
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Sure, but it takes time to build brands like NYT, WSJ, WaPo etc. Until then, personal credibility will have to suffice.
Even then I don’t subscribe to any news sites. I want to just roll up and say “I’d like one article today please, here’s a quarter” I refuse to sign up to something I’ll barely use.