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Flattr is closing down (2023)

flattr.com

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Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#111

Post by ThrowawayTestr »

diggan wrote: post #109
amadeuspagel wrote: post #13

Flattr is the kind of idea that sounds great, that people love talking about - if only they could make a small donation to every website they liked - but that doesn't work because people are fundamentally too selfish. This is why ads are the only viable business model for a kind of "ephemeral website" - something you visit only briefly, derive some short knowledge or pleasure from until you follow a link somewhere el…

> if only they could make a small donation to every website they liked - but that doesn't work because people are fundamentally too selfish. Hear hear, this is exactly why bittorrent trackers is just a fad that will disappear as quickly as it appeared. What, are people supposed to just share data freely without getting paid for it? Good luck I tell them, it's impossible because every single person is just too selfish…

Not seeding a torrent requires more effort than seeding, it's also basically free.

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#112

Post by ikrenji »

diggan wrote: post #109
amadeuspagel wrote: post #13

Flattr is the kind of idea that sounds great, that people love talking about - if only they could make a small donation to every website they liked - but that doesn't work because people are fundamentally too selfish. This is why ads are the only viable business model for a kind of "ephemeral website" - something you visit only briefly, derive some short knowledge or pleasure from until you follow a link somewhere el…

> if only they could make a small donation to every website they liked - but that doesn't work because people are fundamentally too selfish. Hear hear, this is exactly why bittorrent trackers is just a fad that will disappear as quickly as it appeared. What, are people supposed to just share data freely without getting paid for it? Good luck I tell them, it's impossible because every single person is just too selfish…

torrents are viable with a few dozen seeders. you can't build a business on a few dozen 1$ donations

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#113

Post by amelius »

mminer237 wrote: post #91
amelius wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe adblockers could take the role of microdonation platforms. I'd pay $100/yr to have ads removed from every site I visit, and have my $100 distributed among the websites that I visit most.

This is essentially Brave browser's entire proposition for its existence.

When clicking "Private advertising" on the Brave website you get:

> Powerful Ad Formats (...)

> Diversify from Big Tech channels, and get the first-mover advantage of advertising in the fastest-growing search engine since Bing. Search ads are privacy-preserving, text-based ads that appear at the top of a user’s search engine results page (SERP).

> (...)

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#114

Post by opengears »

ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #111
diggan wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if only they could make a small donation to every website they liked - but that doesn't work because people are fundamentally too selfish. Hear hear, this is exactly why bittorrent trackers is just a fad that will disappear as quickly as it appeared. What, are people supposed to just share data freely without getting paid for it? Good luck I tell them, it's impossible because every single person is just too selfish…

Not seeding a torrent requires more effort than seeding, it's also basically free.

This argument does not take bandwidth into account. If the goal is to download a lot of different files, you will be effectively limiting your download with keeping (especially very popular) torrents seeded. I stand corrected if somebody could please disprove me.

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#116

Post by opengears »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #13

Flattr is the kind of idea that sounds great, that people love talking about - if only they could make a small donation to every website they liked - but that doesn't work because people are fundamentally too selfish. This is why ads are the only viable business model for a kind of "ephemeral website" - something you visit only briefly, derive some short knowledge or pleasure from until you follow a link somewhere el…

this is called "tragedy of the commons" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#117

Post by technofiend »

PurpleRamen wrote: post #71
amadeuspagel wrote: post #13

Flattr is the kind of idea that sounds great, that people love talking about - if only they could make a small donation to every website they liked - but that doesn't work because people are fundamentally too selfish. This is why ads are the only viable business model for a kind of "ephemeral website" - something you visit only briefly, derive some short knowledge or pleasure from until you follow a link somewhere el…

IMHO their main problems were: they delivered too early, and failed in what they offered. When they started, there was no donation-economy like we have today on Twitch, Ko-fi, and others, nor was there an established support-hivemind like we have with Patreon, Github and others. So people did not know what they should do with it. And on the other side was Flattr a bit annoying to use in the beginning, and had percent…

Even something like Patreon is a hard sell. I donated for a couple of years to an author I liked because he had a proven track record of delivery, so helping him concentrate on writing rather than a day job let him create more works. But him aside, I mostly see Patreon used to fund authors that are stringing along patrons with promises of "You'll be a few chapters ahead of free readers" vs "This can make the difference that will let me finish." To that end, at least for me, I just go between a few so there's usually something new to read, and if not, oh well.

If I were to publish in that space, I'd stream chapters slowly but regularly for free and the top donation tier would yield the completed work, but priced at the median payment I'd expect to get stringing people along for a few months. That's probably not a good business model, but I think it would prove less frustrating.

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#118

Post by teekert »

worldsayshi wrote: post #28
colesantiago wrote: post #10

This is very unfortunate and surprising, goes to show that even after 14 years Flattr didn't find any market. I was hoping for bitcoin and crypto to show low usage after around 15 years of no legitimate use cases other than speculation, ransomware and other scammy things, but Flattr's shutdown was a surprise. Flattr billed itself as the RSS of donations to really get rid of those ugly PayPal buttons on blogs, website…

Maybe one thing that held them back was that one of the founders was also founder of The Pirate Bay. Maybe potential big clients didn't want the association.

Could also work for him, like SBF in his hoodie playing fortnite impressing bankers and such.

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#119

Post by throwawayq3423 »

PurpleRamen wrote: post #71
amadeuspagel wrote: post #13

Flattr is the kind of idea that sounds great, that people love talking about - if only they could make a small donation to every website they liked - but that doesn't work because people are fundamentally too selfish. This is why ads are the only viable business model for a kind of "ephemeral website" - something you visit only briefly, derive some short knowledge or pleasure from until you follow a link somewhere el…

IMHO their main problems were: they delivered too early, and failed in what they offered. When they started, there was no donation-economy like we have today on Twitch, Ko-fi, and others, nor was there an established support-hivemind like we have with Patreon, Github and others. So people did not know what they should do with it. And on the other side was Flattr a bit annoying to use in the beginning, and had percent…

Also Patreon. The real failure was adopting a panhandling model of giving "each time" you consume content. Not only is this high friction, but people don't like doing it.

They should have aggressively pushed a subscription model ($2 a month or less) that reoccured so creators actually could have reliable income.

Re: Flattr is closing down (2023)

#120

Post by teekert »

geokon wrote: post #35
amadeuspagel wrote: post #13

Flattr is the kind of idea that sounds great, that people love talking about - if only they could make a small donation to every website they liked - but that doesn't work because people are fundamentally too selfish. This is why ads are the only viable business model for a kind of "ephemeral website" - something you visit only briefly, derive some short knowledge or pleasure from until you follow a link somewhere el…

I know HN froths at the mouth on this topic.. But Cryptominers/Hashcash are also an alternative. It's only been made non-viable due to the major players who depend on ad-supremacy making sure all browsers fingerprint and block them

I think you're not wrong. There is the BTC Lightning network which burns A LOT less energy and the low transfer costs make it feasible to stream fractions of cents. Ie. when listening to a podcast via Podcasting 2.0 app (like Podverse). Btw, I upvoted you, all the frothing was fading out your reply.

BTC Lightning is one of those babies people want to wash away with the bathwater. Or perhaps it's the only one I know so far. I do agree 99.99% of "crypto" is shitcoin scams.

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